#I don’t know Harry StylesTM sorry to that man

[releaseholiday]

Ik you said you dont care about concert tickets but I need to say that it wasn’t larries that were complaining about free tickets being given away last night or the night before, it was hardcore harries being mad that they weren’t in LA so they couldn’t get them or they paid insane amount of money for theirs, so it is unfair to insinuate some larries who are wishing failure upon hshq were making things up or seeing things that weren’t there.

Yeah that photo was taken minutes before the show but forum being full obviously don’t tell the whole story behind it. There is this kinda big twitter account helping fans with concert tickets, even they said that what is happening with LA residency -low priced, unsold and free tickets- hasn’t happened with any other of his residencies so far even when ticketmaster released unsold tickets right before the concert or sold them outside of the arenas. Calling all his forum dates sold-out is a marketing line underlining the high demand he has had, but it was literally not the case with night 1 and 2. Ofc hshq won’t wanna disturb that illusion of H being so demanded that you get to be a part of an exclusive club if you attend his shows (why do ppl think harries are looking down on Louis’ prices bc they think it is not something elite and show the quality of his crowds or smth lol) bc that is the most alluring part of being a het H fan, so they gave out free tickets and lowered the prices. Btw there were still unsold tickets on websites when he was on stage, so 🙇🏻‍♀️

Yeah, thats what I’ve heard/seen as well. Idk it’s pretty obvious to me that harries are losing interest. They loved being fans of the Harry that everyone loved bc they looked cool, now they’re even embarrassed to say they’re his fans lol. Let’s see how the new mv or whatever this Gill lounge thing is goes (bc I haven’t seen that much hype over it either tbh)

[thunderoad]

What do you think about the way H is portrayed in the media & the way he portrays himself? I feel so put off by it? The more he's praised the less excited I get about his solo stuff, the more H acts robotic the less excited I get about him entirely... Part of me thinks it's bc I'm bitter the others aren't praised as much but the other part of me is truly scared that it's gonna hurt H in the long run... Sorry for the ramblings I just love your POV on stuff, feel free to not answer

this is such a lovely, thoughtful comment! i feel like i’ve been trying to address this in some way since i wrote tmwy; what the heck is it like to be harry styles(TM), and how does he feel about it? in some ways it’s easier to think about harry like that, from within, rather than how i feel about him because..it’s so hard to know what to think? 

and that feels very intentional on his part, and not without good reason. he was so young when the band took off and so much of the band’s early attention centered on him, and his friendship with louis, and this reputation he developed for being some kind of lothario. it must be so weird to recognize that you exist as a person not quite who you are to a huge, huge number of people, and if you can do that - separate yourself from how you appear - then you can take certain steps to changing that appearance. 

in that way, i think harry’s very savvy and intelligent, very good at making the best of his situation; there’s that dave chapelle quote that once you’re famous, you can be infamous, but you can’t be un-famous, so harry figured out how to carve out private spaces for himself by stepping back from social media and even, at most opportunities, from pap attention. 

so on one hand, i feel the same way you do. this poor guy’s been hurt by unrelenting prying into every aspect of his life; can i really begrudge him for wanting some privacy? but, on the other hand, some of his robotic-ness feels...i don’t know, not so much like it’s self-protecting, but like he’s saying whatever you want rather than nothing at all. and that’s where it can get kind of frustrating, because it’s like, i see what you’re doing here, my man! it’s very clever, but i’d prefer he own up to it rather than forcing this impasse where he’s like schrodinger’s cat in this box of public perception. is he what he seems, or does he just want us to think that? 

media attention and his fans portray him much the same way as he portrayed himself in the another man spread; ambiguously sexy, stylish, heir apparent to a big musical legacy, flower child, and so on. i think that’s what bugged me about that spread so much. there’s so many other people in those pictures - literally, another man - where’s harry? 

so maybe it’d shatter the illusion in some way, or maybe - and i write about this possibility all the time - he’s not quite sure what he is when he’s not harry stylesTM, musician, actor, the public face of a guy who never really got the chance to grow up. it’s an unanswerable question, but just by not ever commenting on anything people say about him - not even about dunkirk stuff, or hiatus stuff, or ever really seeming to come out of his bubble - that silence can start to seem disingenuous, for whatever reason. 

i worry about him getting overhyped before anyone has heard any of his music, and harry forced into this deadlock where he doesn’t have the freedom to experiment and grow as a young artist, where it’s impossible to be unaffected and aloof in the face of all that expectation, and sincerely not letting him be unsuccessful by dint of believing in the myth surrounding him. 

i remember thinking that what gemma wrote about him in the another man piece was so interesting, and so sad; she talks about how harry went to the x-factor and never really came home, and all their memories of him became his origin story. it seems a sort of tongue-in-cheek reference to the mythological foundation laid by the x-factor itself, but it also made me wonder whether harry feels that way, too. it’s like everything before the moment you step onto the world’s stage was just build up, and this thing you are in front of the world’s watching eyes is who you really are, and in that, all you are...it must be strange.

and i totally get what you mean about the others, though it’s not anyone’s fault, i don’t think. they all have these ~public personas, and the press has all chosen to deal with them in their own ways, and for the most part they seem happy with it, you know? i think it can just be frustrating to feel like one of them is received with more gravitas than the others, or that one’s accomplishments aren’t as significant, or that any one of them is less successful than the others. i loved what niall’s record label guy said the other day, that as much as ‘this town’ is a bit of a surprise radio hit, it didn’t really need to be; it was enough that people were resonating with it. success is really just what it means to you, but i wish the lads were all treated on more an even keel, too - if only because i love reading about what people outside of our fandom think. 

i love harry. i should’ve started with that - i love harry, and he has one of my favorite voices ever, and he’s written some of my absolute favorite one direction songs. but he’s undoubtedly an enigma. that’s all i can say with any certainty.