Sixteen-year-old Justin Bieber’s star literally went pop—straight from a 2007 YouTube video (posted by his mom) of him singing Ne-Yo’s “So Sick” to a record deal with LA Reid’s label the following year; a No. 1 Billboard album, My World 2.0; gigs on Saturday Night Live and American Idol; a People magazine superlative (“World’s Biggest Pop Star”); and a whole new breed of fan: screaming, crying, fainting, fawning, ’tweening, Twittering “Beliebers,” who could make the running of the bulls look like a geriatric walkathon. So when Bieber met 29-year-old bombshell and reality star Kim Kardashian at May’s White House correspondents’ dinner and tweeted a flirty picture of them together—with the caption, “Look it’s my girlfriend”—the mob organized. “I started to get death threats from 10-year-old girls, saying that I stole their man and they were gonna come find me,” Kardashian says. “So I Twittered Justin and let him know that his Beliebers want to kill me.” Faced with the tough decision of letting the world believe he was dating the raven-haired pinup of his dreams or placating his fans with the innocent truth, Bieber took the high road. “ladies calm down,” he tweeted. “@kimkardashian is a friend. a very sexy friend but a friend. no need 4 threats. Let’s all be friends and hang out often ;).” To reward his fan loyalty, ELLE gives the teen idol another day in paradise.