Music

Free Shipping: Larry, bravery, and One Direction's most devoted sect of fans

by Josiah Hughes

Last May, for my day job as music editor at Fast Forward Weekly, I interviewed Dayna Aasen, the most intense One Direction fan in Calgary.

By that point, I’d heard the band’s two big singles, determined that they sounded pretty rockin’ in a post-Simple Plan/Natasha Bedingfield collab popscape, and thought little else about them. Dayna came over to my house, however, and passionately exposed every conceivable aspect of the “fandom,” a worldwide network of tweens, teens, and, er, people in their tweenties (someone needs to come up with a catchy name for older One Direction fans).

Sure, they have some amazing Facebook groups going on. And there’s a ton of One Direction insanity going on on Twitter. Want to see some hilarious pencil crayon drawings that re-imagine the members as furries? I bet Deviant Art is packed with that shit. Still, if there’s one thing I’ve observed, it’s that the fandom has a special link with Tumblr.

Before we go any further, I need to teach you some words. They’re mostly pretty awful, but you need to know them. The first one is “ship,” and I’m not talking about the extra fee you have to pay to get your 1D Uggs. It’s not just an awesome abbrev of the noun “relationship,” either. It’s a verb, used to describe a relationship that you’d like to see come to fruition in real life.

Let’s use it in a sentence, but we’ll step outside of the fandom for a second to give our sense of self-respect some time to heal. If you wanted, say, Hayden to go on a date with Julie Doiron, that would mean you “ship” Hayden and Julie Doiron. Some people ship multiple couples, but then the top imaginary relationship they’d like to see is their “one true pairing,” or OTP. Also, if you ship a couple you usually come up with a celebrity couple name. So in this case, I guess Hayden and Julie Doiron would be Hoiron. Hate yourself yet?

This brings me to the next word you need to learn, which is “manip.” This one’s pretty self-explanatory, as it’s an abbreviation for “manipulation.” If you’re shipping a couple hard, then you hit up your laptop and manip the couple, so that it looks like they’re holding hands on the red carpet, sneaking a smooch in a restaurant, or, at times, doing unspeakably erotic things to one another.

The point is, these tweens (etc.) are incredible at computers. Like seriously amazing. You think you’re good with some Photoshop shortcut keys nonsense? Think you run a tight ship online? Nothing like these Directioners. This is one plugged-in fandom, and they’re running a next-level web presence.

With all the ships that people are shipping and manipping out there (I’m so, so sorry), shit can get pretty wacky. There’s even a dark fanfic spread around the fandom about One Direction member Zayn Malik committing a horrendous, pedophiliac act that I won’t mention ever again. The fandom is basically 4chan, but with Tumblr’s endless scrolling and pretty mouse cursors.

Now, One Direction are an openly manufactured reality show creation. But even though they sprung from Simon Cowell’s unholy, demented brain, they’re still five British children (well, the blonde one Niall is Irish. I don’t know if he’s from the British or independent part of Ireland and I sure as hell am not about to Google it) who eventually hit it off as buds. One pairing who had a particular “Did we just become best friends?” moment were Louis Tomlinson, the homeliest lad of the bunch, and teen heartthrob Harry Styles.

In what the less sophisticated among us would describe as a “bromance,” Louis and Harry hit it off as buds. They’d joke around in interviews, talking about how they had crushes on each other, saying that they’d get married, and wearing shirts that said “Harry <3 Louis” or whatever. Their moms would tweet jokes about how their sons were in love (by the way, every single human being involved with One Direction has their own Twitter account), and they’d jokingly get all touchy feely with each other in music videos. They moved into an apartment together, and they experienced fame together.

To even the weakest adult gaydar, it comes across as pretty clear that these two are most likely joking. Harry, especially, comes across as a classic ladykiller. When One Direction lost The X Factor to some nobody named Matt Cardle (again, not Googling), Harry was busted whispering into his ear, “think how much pussy you’re going to get.” Soon after, he also started dating 32-year-old TV presenter Caroline Flack when he was only 17.

Yet, in the same place of the brain where the Illuminati conspiracy can take hold of the best of us, some refused to believe that the music-video grabbery was just a joke. Instead, they had started shipping Louis Tomlinson and Harry Styles hard. So hard, in fact, that Larry Stylinson was born.

The Larry shippers are a controversial sub-sect of the fandom. Some think they hurt the fandom with their fanatical, over-the-top posts, their ability to screenshot every possible instance of eye contact between Louis and Harry, and their theorizing about Modest! Management, the company that represents One Direction.

In the minds of the Larry shippers, M!M is an evil, monolithic entity, hell-bent on crushing the dreams of two gay lovers via intimidation, mind control, and endless scheming. Every relationship Louis or Harry have had since One Direction got big were, essentially, a carefully manicured effort to contain “Larry” by management.

Let’s say Louis and Harry were a gay couple. Of course, that’d be a wonderful thing. It’d also be insanely newsworthy, and, in an ideal world, could potentially make One Direction even more popular than they are now. It wouldn’t really make sense to stifle them from coming out, would it? Or let’s say they were a gay couple who were too nervous to come out. Do you think it would encourage them to know that there are countless Photoshopped images of Harry, ball-gagged on a table, being spanked by Louis, or Deviant Art profiles dedicated to realistic renderings of their sex acts?

Regardless, these things exist, and they’ve evolved into some sort of twisted fanfic civil rights movement. After a while, Louis eventually had enough, taking to his Twitter in September of 2012 to say, “Still months on reading ridiculous conspiracy theories. It’s upsetting that I have to read them daily. Thank god for the lovely people on here.”

When a Larry shipper refused to agree, he responded to her.

Case closed, right? I mean, either Louis is most definitely not gay with Harry, or he’s not ready to come out. Well, actually, no. To shippers, Louis even acknowledging that Larry exists was, in essence, a way of confirming that it’s real, that management was stifling his beautiful forbidden love, and that it was up to Tumblr to show enough support so the relationship could blossom.

Tumblr user It’s Like a Pendulum even started the hashtag #bravery with her post titled “A Sort of Unpopular Opinion,” where she wrote, among many other things about how the fandom was affecting gay rights, “I honestly believe that us Larry shippers are going to be a major turning point in history. We are changing our generation, and we aren’t backing down.”

I needed in.

In an effort to understand how the Larry shippers operate, as well as to appease my endless appetite for Internet shit-stirring, I decided that I’d like to infiltrate the community for one weekend. To do so, I started Let Larry Live, a Tumblr run by a fictional PR rep for the band who was tired of hiding the lies. Here’s the bio that I initially listed on my Tumblr:

“I will not reveal my name. Up until last week, I was a PR representative for One Direction. Without notice or a satisfactory reason, I was laid off. Because of this, I have chosen to stop protecting the lies spread about the secret relationship between Louis Tomlinson and Harry Styles. It’s time to expose the greatest music industry conspiracy of our time. I’ve spent the last year of my life watching so many of you fight for the truth while I sit in an office being forced to cover things up. But you guys saw through it and fought for what you knew was right. I’m here to tell you you were right.

This is Let Larry Live. This is the truth.”

 

Soon after, I started the Let Larry Live Twitter account, and got to work on the batch of fake emails. I was about to go all Julian Assange on the fandom, leaking some serious evidence to support the Larry shippers. Except it was going to be so obviously, unbelievably fake that no one could conceivably fall for it.

Fact-checking with my One D-obsessed friend, I manufactured some emails in Microsoft Word, each of which suggested some backroom dealings with that awful entity known as management about how they’d protect Louis and Harry’s secret relationship. There were emails about Louis’ Twitter meltdown, the fact that the two would-be lovers have potentially linkable tattoos, and then a chain of emails about how management had set up Harry’s tryst with Taylor Swift.

I literally just typed them in a plain text document, adding greater-than signs before each line of some of the messages to make them look like replies. Then, to give it more of a top secret vibe, I screencapped the plain text, dropped it in Photoshop and dicked around with the Threshold to make it look all old and declassified. Finally, because I was seeking the advice of a fictional lawyer, I blacked out the first half of the fictional Modest! Management emails that I made up.

Within an hour of posting the first email, I had hundreds of reblogs and Tumblr followers. By the end of the day, I had upwards of 500 followers. I’d also started a small movement across the web with my #letlarrylive hashtag, as many openly discussed the authenticity of the leaked emails.

An early adopter was a Tumblr user blogging on the page “The Brave Don’t Surrender” (catch that #bravery reference?), who posted a lengthy analysis of my first two email leaks. Though she wrongfully identified me as a woman, she went on to corroborate the dates with real events, adding some credence to the claims.

As the reblogs kept piling up and the email leaks kept getting more and more of a response, my “ask me anything” box was popping off, with questions and claims from Larry-shipping Tumblr users. One young so-and-so even told us that she’d seen the emails before!

“I really think everything you say is true. My mother works close with Modest and I’ve seen these emails about Larry. I’ve seen discussions. I’m a big fan of 1D, and my mother let’s me know a lot of things, and I’ve done my own research. Keep up the good work, I’ll try to keep my computer away from my mum so she doesn’t say anything. Good Luck xx”

If there’s one thing I noticed right away, it was that even the most skeptical users were as polite as could be.

“How trustworthy is this blog?I’m begging you to be honest Please believe I am not trying to come off as rude but I think It’s too good to be true,” one user asked.

“But pictures are better. I mean im sorry if this sounded rude,” another added.

“Why do you want us to spread this around as much as possible? I’m not trying to be rude, I really appreciate you doing this, but do you want this so you can have more publicity?” another asked.

Then there were those who rightfully pointed out that literally anyone could have made these fake documents.

Tumblr user harryfuckintomlinson wrote, “But I mean… honestly, emails don’t even look like that. It looks like you typed it up in Word.”

Another added, “Why should anyone believe your emails? It is so incredibly easy to shop those.”

That wasn’t the only hole in my story, either. In fact, when I had been working on this project the night before, a combination of over-confidence and sleep deprivation had me bragging about the project to literally no one from my personal Twitter account. “Plotting some elaborate One Direction mischief” I wrote, later proving dumb enough to actually Tweet “Let Larry Live.” Ugh, I’m such an idiot sometimes / usually / always.

Remember when I told you how insanely web savvy these Directioners are? Well, they found my shit, immediately Tweeted at me, and posted the screen shots on Tumblr. Let Larry Live, after a few hours, was dead. Right?

Well, actually, no. Despite their best efforts to spread it across Tumblr, the hundreds of messages I was receiving amounted to less than half calling me out as Josiah Hughes, and countless still asking for clarification about the emails and when the couple would be coming out.

I couldn’t even be stopped by my own foolishness, and I tried to cover my tracks by writing, “Who is Jesiah? Did I cross wires with a spam site or something? You don’t have to believe my screenshots but please don’t spam my inbox anymore. Thanks!”

Then someone replied with, “I’m not sure who Jesiah is, but could you possibly be talking about Jesal Parshotam? He’s a pap who takes lots of photos of Louis and Eleanor and seems to be working with Modest in some way. His twitter handle is @therealjesal.” They literally know the information about any and every person who has ever crossed paths with One Direction.

Someone else wrote, “Don’t play a fool, we all seen your tweets, you didn’t delete them.” They were clearly referring to my sloppily maintained personal account, but I used that to my advantage, because the @letlarrylive Twitter feed had been suspended shortly after I started it when I was spamming too many One Direction fans in an effort to raise awareness about my leaks. Publicly, on Tumblr, I replied to that comment, writing, “Are you talking about my account @letlarrylive? I didn’t delete any Tweets, it was strangely suspended last night.” Guess who most of the fans thought suspended my account? MANAGEMENT.

Then there were the legal ramifications of what I was doing. As countless users pointed out, even if I blocked out last names and email addresses, I was probably breaking the conditions of whatever contract I had signed when my fictional whistleblower was working for the band. The perception wasn’t that I could be drowned in legal fees, but that I’d actually wind up in jail, with a SWAT Team of Modest! Management employees finding my IP address, kicking down my door and sending me to some sort of pop music equivalent of Guantanamo Bay.

I used the warnings of imprisonment as fodder for more entertainment. Rightfully, many of these fans deduced that if I had actually consulted a lawyer, they would have told me not to leak any of the emails. Furthermore, they would especially not advise me to leak them on Tumblr, with no financial gain or any logical reason for doing so. A disgruntled former employee does not consult a lawyer before posting shit on Tumblr.

To address this issue, I took on the following message: “But wouldn’t M!M make you sign a confidentiality agreement contract ? i was talking to my dad and he said that if so then you could go to jail for even posting one word that were in the ‘emails’ so..?? If you did sign a contract and all this stuff is true plz stop.. its not worth going to jail for really, we don’t need anymore evidence that Larry is real, we have enough… even though all this is greatly appreciated its not worth going to jail for. and if not Keep going and good luckxx.”

Responding, I wrote, “Oh my god is this true? Truth be told I never spoke with a real lawyer. I was talking to a friend in law school. Can anyone confirm or deny?”

From there, I had girls from all over the world talking to their dads about what may or may not be legal. There was the daughter of an international lawyer, the daughter of a Swiss lawyer (to whom I wrote “maybe the law is different in Swiss law?” and she replied “you’re probably right”) and countless others.

To throw another wrench into it, I said that the friend I consulted was actually not even in law school yet, but they had applied to law school. At that point, I started getting more messages that said things along the lines of “I’m not trying to be rude, but I seriously doubt this blog.”

There were those who started to see the cracks in my story, including a Portuguese Larry shipper who wrote, “VAI CHUPAR UM BUCETINHA O ARROMBADA DO CARALHO! QUERO QUE SEU CU RACHE QUE TANTO GOZO QUE VAI SAIR DO MEU PAU E VAI CAIR NO SEU OLHO. VAI FICAR GRAVIDA NO OLHO VADIA SEM LAR. SEM RUA. IMUNDA. FILHA DE UM SAPATÃO DO CARALHO. MAL COMIDA. PROSTITUTA DE MEIA BOCA DE PRATO DE COMIDA. CHUPA ROLA CANINA O ARREGANHADA. VAI CUME CUZINHO, VAI FAZER UM CUNETE EM UM NEGÃO PELUDO O DESGRAMADA SEM LAR. PIROCA PARA TI <3”

According to Google Translate, that means, “GO SUCK A FUCKING pussy The broken! I WANT HER SO MUCH JOY TO SPLIT CU GOING OUT OF MY DICK AND WILL HANG IN YOUR EYE. WILL BECOME PREGNANT IN THE EYE HOME WITHOUT bitch. NO STREET. Unclean. DAUGHTER OF A FUCKING romp. BAD FOOD. WHORE MOUTH OF HALF OF FOOD DISH. The CANINE CHUPA ROLLS ARREGANHADA. WILL RIDGE ass, WILL MAKE A CUNETE NEGÃO HAIRY IN A HOME WITHOUT THE DESGRAMADA. Piroca FOR IT <3”

Such a vivid picture!

A major point of contention I noticed in the Larry shipping community was that of age, as many users pointed out how ashamed of myself I should be for giving false hope to 13 year olds. Others, however, would say, “How dumb do you think we are? We’re not all 13 year old girls, you know.”

When I had run out of fabricated emails to leak, I wanted to gracefully back out of the project and admit it was a fake. I tried replying to more questions from my ask box with the dumbest answers I could think of, hoping that it’d get a rise out of these kids and reveal myself as a fake.

“Why the fuck are you up at 6:09 in the morning… i bet you’re an australian girl about 16/17 years old who doesnt have a life #sorrybabe pls dont kill yourself tonight i still love you” wrote one user, to which I replied, “Thank you a dingo ate my baby drink Fosters.” Still more messages showing support for the blog.

Then I tried to disprove the fact that I had sought anything even close to legal counsel. One skeptical user had written, “Before, you said you had a lawyer, and now suddenly you say that it’s just a friend in law school? Why? Sounds pretty suspicious,” to which I replied, “Ok I’m not gonna lie it was a friend who once mentioned possibly signing up for law school but I don’t even know if they did also its a friend I met on Chatroulette.” Guess what happened next? Even more messages showing support for the blog.

Finally, I decided enough was enough and I’d end it all once and for all. I changed the biography section on my Tumblr to read as follows:

“Welcome to Let Larry Live, the number one source on Tumblr for celebrities named Larry. If there’s a famous dude and his name is Larry, this is the spot where you’ll see a JPEG or PNG of him. Thanks for checkin’ out the blog and keep on Larryin’!”

Then I posted hi-res images of Larry David, Larry Sanders, Larry Bird, Larry the Cable Guy, Larry King, Larry the Cucumber, and Larry Fine (I left out Larry Flynt and Leisure Suit Larry — seemed a little too creepy to be sharing with a bunch of kids). You’ll never guess what I received the last time I logged into Tumblr — more words of support.

I don’t really know what to do about Let Larry Live. I’ve still got close to 500 followers, even after a few unfollowed, and they slowly but surely continue to pass my emails around. They’ve also assured me that they’ve screenshotted them all, in case management decides to have them deleted from the web.

They’re some of the smartest, most critical thinking web users out there, yet they refuse to give up hope on a relationship that’s either entirely fictional or none of their business. In a way, that’s #bravery. After all, they’ll fight to the end to just #letlarrylive.