#even if I hate it when the discourse gets back to me

[dogsliampaynedoesntinstagram]

I wonder quite often if their lives would be better if their relationship hadn’t played out in front of us, as fans. quite so obviously or if in hindsight they would have wished us to pretend not to have noticed.

It’s so complicated isn’t it, and we’ll never know what might have been different, but I have conflicting feelings sometimes about fandom

Thanks for your thoughts anon - I think it is complicated.

What I find really interesting is that I don't think there's another way. I think the things that makes Larry so compelling are the same things that made 1D famous.

1D's fame is obviously tied up with not just the rise in social media and all that entails, but the change in what video meant. It's not just that every fan can film them, it's that every interview they do is being filmed and uploaded on youtube where it'll be easily accessible indefinitely.

And it's not even the technology itself that is so important, but that nobody involved understood what the technology would mean socially and culturally.

A 16 year old today, will have a base level of knowledge that if you're filmed that film could be available forever and could reach a very wide audience. In 2010, 1D members had no way to really comprehend that. However, Harry and Louis intended to navigate a homophobic industry at that point, they couldn't have possibly understood the risks they were taking.

But it wasn't just the, their team also had their eye on the wrong ball. In the past, the risk of being outted came from the tabloids and their team were very good at tabloids. But they didn't understand what it would mean that hundreds of thousands of fans could watch, clip, and edit every single moment of every interview and performance. From when their team realised that there was a real danger, not just a situation that needed to be managed, (I think April 2012 is a very reasonable guess), they were scrambling reactively.

The exact same wave of new technology and the culture that came with it that enabled 1D to become the biggest band in the world, meant that aspects of 1D members relationships were captured in ways that no band members had had to deal with before.

I imagine they don't look back and ask 'what if?', because it'd be so hard to pull anything out (and they have other things to wish for). But I do imagine their feelings about being seen and having privacy are even more complicated than most queer celebrities.

************

It's fascinating to me to hear about all the new people being persuaded on new forms of social media. Obviously there's a lot going on, and a lot of nonsense gets distributed, but I think it also suggests that those videos are still compelling - a decade after they were made. And I think that is interesting and noteworthy.

And I don't mean to suggest that the fact that the videos are still compelling is a sign we're right (we almost certainly are wrong about some things, and are probably wrong about many things). But there is something in those videos, those moments captured that has meaning and connects to people.