Last night saw the emergence of an offensive trending topic on Twitter that was supposedly started as a practical joke.

Some members of the internet community 4chan spread the phrase '#cutforbieber' after posting a suggestion on a message board thad read: "Lets start a cut yourself for bieber campaign. Tweet a bunch of pics of people cutting themselves and claim we did it because bieber was smoking weed."

The hashtag soon became a worldwide trending topic on the social networking site and it directly targeted fans of the teen sensation Justin Bieber.

Singer Janet Devlin took to her official Twitter page much earlier today (January 8) to address the negative trend and encouraged people who have experienced self-harm in the past to not be taken in by it. She also sent out a supportive message to anyone who had "relapsed" as a direct cause of the night's events:

"#cut4bieber are you kidding me! Self harm is not a joke. I don't think some people fully understand the effect this could have on people. To anyone who may have relapsed due to the hashtag, things will get better again and I hope you find yourself on the path to recovery soon x."

Former Disney beauty Miley Cyrus also gave her opinion on the trend, calling it "so disrespectful".

Check out a sneak peek of Devlin's new music here: