Is Justin Bieber Punking Us Or Just Turning Stolen “Footage” Into An Opportunity?

Well, if today’s conspiracy theorists are to be believed, we may have to wait a little longer for that Justin Bieber sex tape/spaghetti-and-milk recipe. Several sites, such as Oh No They Didn’t, are pointing to a number of clues on Twitter and VEVO that seem to indicate that the whole story of Bieber’s stolen laptop and phone — news he broke himself on Twitter earlier this week — is actually all a publicity stunt leading up to the release of his video with Nicki Minaj, “Beauty and a Beat.”

The clues:

Again, it was Bieber himself who broke the news of the theft and then complained that there was personal footage on the lost devices.

That same night, a Twitter user named @gexwy tweeted at Bieber that he’d accessed his videos.

But those videos are just the kind of cute backstage antics that Bieber is always taking part in.

The day after those tweets, the only supposed nude photo to leak was widely declared to be fake.

Yesterday, Justin tweeted back at gexwy and sounded kind of falsely defensive.

And then Justin retweeted Nicki Minaj’s tease of a surprise today and added his own mysterious “noon,” which is exactly when gexwy threatened to release the “stolen” videos.

ONTD discovered a thumbnail on VEVO (now set to private) that shows Nicki and Justin together, probably teasing their video.

This morning, Justin again tweeted #noon with a link to an E! Online story and several others about gexwy’s threats (but not about the conspiracy theory).

So here’s a question: Is it really all a prank? Or is Justin maybe saving face or taking advantage of a potentially embarrassing situation by releasing something of his own at the same time as the thief?