22/04/2014
The time is 17.45
It’s the 22nd of April. Or, more importantly: three days ‘til WWA kicks off in Bogota, Columbia.
My name is Kristin – but please, call me Krissy. I live a lot online, probably just like yourself. This here’s my new blog, and I’m honoured that you’re reading it. I’m 17 at the current date and I live in sunny ol’ Great Britain.
Hrm. There’s a lot more I could say about me, but that’ll do for now 🙂
My tickets arrived in the post today, and on twitter I found a group of people also attending the same show as me; one girl added me to a list of us and I had a brief discussion with a couple of people about where they were standing/sitting and whether or not they were camping out before hand. That’s how twitter rolls: uniting fans, keeping fandoms alive. It’s great. I’ll probably be talking a little bit incessantly about twitter on this blog. Probably Tumblr too, and to a degree, Youtube, for all the role it plays concerning One Direction.
The point of this blog, in short – very short – is to chronicle my experience as a One Direction fan. Which means that yes, I’m going to be writing about myself, but only as far as I can write about One Direction in the way which I chiefly experience it – which is as an integral, every day part of my lifestyle and routine.
This isn’t a blog about me, it’s more of a blog THROUGH me, and about One Direction, if that makes any sense.
Righty-ho then!
I have tickets for the 28th of May, which is the only date in the tour at Sunderland’s fabulous Stadium of Light.
I have attended a concert there once before: Bruce Springsteen, on his Wrecking Ball tour – this was pre-Miley Cyrus, just in case you were wondering ,so the name had fewer connotations then, *winkwink* – and that was an experience to be remembered.
I’ve been to a few concerts in my time, some in quite small venues, like Ben Howard. Most in the Newcastle Metro Arena, including Katy Perry, Mumford & Sons, Olly Murs, and JLS. They were all massively enjoyable, but Burce Springsteen was, at that point, the only concert I have ever attended in a stadium. It was mind-boggling, to be honest. It kinda made me want to attend football matches, for the atmosphere alone. Mumford & Sons has probably been my favourite gig so far, but I have a distinct feeling that that is – hang on let me do maths – a mere 36 days away from changing. That took me far too long to work out, ugh – I dropped Maths a year and a half ago and never looked back. Can you tell?
I have no doubt that the 28th is going to be phenomenal. Not least because the band in question means so much to me.
I count myself as very lucky to have tickets to the Where We Are tour, which is being taken all across the globe, into huge, name-famous stadiums, in some of the greatest and most beautiful cities in the world. My parents bought the tickets as birthday presents for myself and my best friend, who moved down to London last year, and it came as a complete surprise to both of us. The fact that she is also coming only heightens my excitement, as everything that happens on the 28th is going to mean twice as much with her there 🙂
For the longest while, I counted myself among the upset and saddened crowd who couldn’t really afford, or had not managed to get hold of tickets. Indeed, for some people, their location was so remote that it wasn’t really feasible for them to go.
However, despite the dichotomy of those who will and those who won’t be attending, the spirit of the fandom is lifting.
Excitement is growing.
Twitter’s going nuts.
This is it. This Is Us. One Direction are going global. Again. And I can’t wait.
The anticipation in the twittersphere is mounting: for months now I’ve seen tweets circulating about how desperate our need is for new reaction gifs, new jokes, new stories and new experiences: new material, essentially, to fuel our everyday pastime. Which is fangirling. I use that as a multi-gender term, by the way. Even guys fangirl.
The only thing that’s really been news in the fandom of late was the release of the official You & I music video earlier this week, on Friday 18th April.
That morning, ‘#LIAMAPPRECIATIONDAY’ trended worldwide, for whatever reason. That’s been mostly what’s happening on twitter. Random hashtags, old gifs, new memes, rants and follow sprees, the twitter fandom have all just kind of been mulling around, waiting for the show to start. Quite literally.
Trending things like ‘#LIAMPAPPRECIATIONDAY’, or a few days ago ‘#ThanksOneDirection’ is pretty easy for a force as powerful and large as the 1D fandom. It happens regularly and it’s always touching. I often wonder if the boys see those hashtags. Whether today Louis, or maybe Niall, texted Zayn like
“hey Z, #ZaynMalikIsAnAngel is trending on twitter” (the actual hashtag was a tad more rude, but y’all are too foulmouthed for me to always quote entirely truthfully;)
Or whether, four days ago, Harry texted Liam and said
“Look what’s trending. have you read the tweets?”
I don’t know. But part of me hopes Liam saw it. The tweets on this hashtag were lovely, and for the most part, hilarious. The fandom can be serious when it wants to, but it seldom needs to be. Mostly it’s just really fun.
And there’s never anything more fun than participating in a benevolent uproar, and as the release of the video at 4pm approached, I enjoyed every second of it. I sat on twitter, gleefully refreshing my timeline as everybody counted down the hours, then the minutes, then the seconds until 4 o’clock, and then suddenly…
A lot of keyboard smashing and hysterical emoji usage.
I left twitter for a while to actually watch the video. Several times. Several hundred times.
The fandom gets obsessive about breaking the Vevo record every time a new video is released, but we haven’t come close for a while. We did it with Best Song Ever, but I do honestly believe that that’s because, well, partially because the record was much lower then, but also because that music video remains one of the most ingenious, hilarious and well crafted pieces of comedy/art out there.
#BenWinstonForPresident I say.
But I’m biased, of course.
Still, nobody can say the fandom isn’t determined. Thousands remain convinced that the clearest way to show our gratitude and adoration is to come back with an all-new view count.
I’m never certain what I’m doing when it comes to breaking Vevo records, as so many “DON’T DO THIS IT WON’T COUNT”s and “YOU HAVE TO DO THIS YOU HAVE TO”s get thrown about that I figure, fine, whatever, I’ll just keep watching it all the way through. It’s not like I have anything better to do. Like A levels. hahahah.
I love the You & I video. And not, as many people might accuse me of, blindly and mindlessly. So often, fans of bands like One Direction, or fans of Justin Bieber, for a less disputable example, are tarred with the same brush: we are loyal to the point of blindness, exultant to the point of naivety, and optimistic about our self-termed ‘idols’ to the extent where no judgement we pass can be taken seriously.
In the somewhat paraphrased words of Harry Styles himself, when a fan says they love you, you think ‘yeah, of course. That’s because you’re a fan’.
But I think there’s a lot that can be unpacked in that.
It’s a bit obvious to me, but maybe that’s because I distinctly identify as an insider. Maybe people outside the world of fandom genuinely don’t get this.
Being a fan of something, yes, naturally implies a degree of implicit love. Yes, the fandom loves the You & I video. But not brainlessly. Not mindlessly. Not for no reason.
Of course, we partially love it because it’s a One Direction video, and it’s tied up in a whole complex nest of reasons of why we are a fan in the first place. But further than that, it’s evident in the progression of how people talk about the video that they’re really, genuinely thinking through the video.
The initial reactions were blatant excitement that the video was up. Which proceeded rapidly to emotional play-by-play breakdowns of everything that had happened in the video. Which always, inevitably becomes vines and screenshots of all the moments with any potential humour, which the fandom grabs hold of squeezes with all its might. This kind of bright interest eventually morphs into something else, though, which I experience – and love experiencing – every time something like a new video appears.
After all the standard hysterics and hilarity, the fandom begins to analyse. They tear apart every facet of the video until they find symbolism and meaning with which they really identify. They look as hard as they can to find what the video means. They see themselves in it and they see every single one of the boys in it. They evaluate, they digest, they pronounce that THIS is how they understand the video, and what they’ve found in it, they love.
Four days later, there are still heartfelt twitlongers and screenshot messages being circulated, crafted to solely express the gratitude of the fans for such a simple, elegant, stripped-back video, with no other people; just us, just one Direction. Just the boys and the fans. Just You & I. The symbolism doesn’t escape us. Nothing escapes us.
THAT is what it means to be a fan.
It means being handed something, whether it be a song, a new video, a film, a comic strip, a new episode or a new book, and investing time, effort, and love into it, if just to reciprocate the time, effort, and love that was poured into making it.
We do not brainlessly and blindly love the new One Direction video. We were handed a gift, and because it was created for us, made, especially for us, we looked as hard and as long at it as we could, in the best possible light, and got out of it every drop of love that was put into it.
One Direction have an awesome relationship with their fans, and you can tell just by looking at their fandom.
Of course, WHY we all love One Direction is a very different, and very long, other story, that I may or may not have time to begin unravelling today. I have a feeling that it’s a story I will be unravelling for the rest of my life though, because, essentially, my status as a ‘Fan of One Direction’ is indeed a thread that will be running through the rest of my life.
But that’s another blog post.
Here, I’ve been referring to the fandom as if I were not part of it, and I am. I am definitely part of it and I will always, always be proud of that. You guys are my family. To quote a tweet I can’t find at the moment:
“The boys be all:
‘I always wanted a brother, and now I have four’
well I always wanted a sister, and now I have millions.”
Sorry, I can’t find the original tweet, but if it’s yours, tell me. I promise I’ll always try my best to cite people properly when I can 🙂
I do frequently just sit quietly on my timeline and observe this fairly new 21st century phenomenon that is online fandom culture. I’m part of a lot of fandoms, but the One Direction one moves me in a different way, possibly because it is centred around five very real, very true stories that have created one massive narrative that we all get to live and breathe every day.
With so many of my fandoms, the story of the fandom is a slightly different one to the stories around which it grows. I’m thinking of the Harry Potter fandom, the Superwholock fandom, Marvel, Hunger Games, Twilight, Lord of the Rings, anything based on a fictional universe. You take your pick.
But there’s something slightly different about bandoms, and I think this is it:
Our story is THE story. It is the story. We’re creating it. We’re rising and falling with these five lads. We are all, collectively, creating One Direction, sustaining it with every second that goes by.
And I love that. I love seeing it, and I love being a part of it. That feels good.
Yesterday when Harry tweeted
“Hope everyone likes the video.. Let me know what you think .x”
I replied by telling him that yes, I loved the video, but my favourite part about it was being reminded just how much I love this fandom.
Of course I didn’t expect him to read that, and obviously I don’t expect any of what I say to him on twitter to be particularly singled out for scrutiny. I have a fairly quiet voice on twitter, I mostly just cheerfully sort of tweet nonsense at Harry. Hey, you can follow me if you like: @Kbbrianne. I’m one voice in a million.
But the fact that I am one voice in a million is exactly what matters.
This is how I’m going to speak now though, as a member of this fandom. I’ve often thought how useful it would be to have some kind of summary blog running of all the lovely, exciting, brilliant, hilarious things that happen in this fandom. Probably some not so lovely things too, as we’re all human, and goodness knows you’ve never seen anger until you’ve seen someone seriously insult the One Direction fandom. But I shall do my absolute best to chronicle every step of this fabulous journey. From a fan perspective. Because we are as much a crucial part of One Direction as Louis Tomlinson, Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik and Liam Payne.
As my ‘Daily Inspirational Quotes’ calendar cheerfully told me this morning, ‘if your ship doesn’t come in, swim out to meet it.’ To which my internal response was:
‘Or take all the debris around you on the beach and build your own ship, to be honest. Then you sail that beauty of a DIY job right past that other ship that never came in. What kind of lousy schedule keeping is that, anyway. Useless. Never sail with that company. Honestly. Tch. Private yachting all the way.’
It’s probably only a matter of time before one of the boys buys a yacht, guys. Goodness knows that’s what every rich person does when they can’t think of other ways to spend their money. It might be Liam – although he’s more likely to get a helicopter, ain’t he? Nutty lad took a helicopter to rehearsals a week or so ago. That was funny. I bet it’ll be Harry. Remember him getting a motorcycle and breaking down in LA? I bet he’ll sail his little yacht right off the coast and have to be air-lifted out of the North Sea or something. I can see the tabloid headlines now. haahhaahah.
That’s what I’m doing. I’m building my own ship. I was looking for a blog, but I’ve decided to BE the blog, instead. Making my own dreams. Not chasing them down like they’re rogue futures that don’t want to co-operate with my life, nuh-uh.
I’m gonna go eat tea now, but I look forward to this journey. This second, as yet unlived part of it. I can’t think of a better time to start blogging, either, because it’s only three days until we go global, and I want to remember every second of it.
I love you all, deeply and dearly, whether you be Nialler himself, or another fan on the other side of the world to whom I have never spoken and probably never will. That’s fandom for you – that’s family. An international family of millions.
Some people tell me there won’t be any One Direction in two years’ time, but those people were probably saying the same thing three years ago, and now who’s laughing. Every day I browse through the internet and I know that this is just the beginning. Three days away from the beginning, in fact, and I’ll be damned if I’m not going to write all of it down.
So, yeah! Hello MTV, and welcome to my blog.
The time is 20.15
The 1D Story. 