Eminem Becomes Most 'Liked' Living Artist On Facebook

Em continues to dominate social media, surpassing Lady Gaga and trailing behind Michael Jackson in Facebook popularity. 

Detroit's biggest name is making even bigger feats in the digital arena. This week, social media tracker Famecount.com found that Eminem has not only joined Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber in the ranks of Youtube's Artists-With-One-Billion-Views Club, but has now surpassed Gaga as the most "liked" artist on Facebook. He currently has 28.88 million Facebook fans, while Gaga is close behind with 28.87 million. Both are led by Michael Jackson, who maintains 29.13 million fans.

"Within the last few hours Eminem has become the world's most popular living person on Facebook," said Famecount founder, Daniel Dearlove. He went on to praise the rapper's successful year in music.

Of course, it's easy to perceive the numbers as arbitrary and to write them off as yet another tallying-trend brought on by obsessors of social media. However, these particular numbers represent a paradox in Eminem's large-scale success within the mainstream. As someone whose popularity is rooted in sentiments of the anti-popular, Em's emergence as the social media king seems almost counter-intuitive.

MJ, Eminem, and Lady Gaga are trailed by Bieber and Rihanna, the latter of whom is the fastest growing star on Facebook.