How One Direction Fangirls Influenced The Internet According To Kaitlyn Tiffany

Is there something that originated with One Direction fans that is still around today?

KT: There were honestly a lot of fandoms making early use of the internet, like Beliebers and Rihanna’s Navy, in addition to One Direction [fans]. They embodied this idea that fandom is responsible for the artists they’re supporting and should have a creative role in their career. For example, One Direction lost The X Factor, and fans decided that they lost the show but won the world. The mythology — whether this is actually true or not — is that the amount of social media action they got is what made them into stars and gave them careers. At one point, fans decided that a certain song should be a single, so they made it happen unofficially. There are rumors that certain international fans taught each other to use VPNs to fake American streams. The DIY approach to pop music fandom started with these early fans.

The craving for intimacy within fandom — something that immediately makes you one of the crowd — is interesting to me. As a fan, I know it’s fun to be a part of something that no one on the outside can truly understand. Do you think there are any platforms right now that offer fans the same kind of opportunity to frantically stockpile inside jokes and shape their own lore the way Tumblr did?

KT: I’m not convinced that there’s some major Tumblr Renaissance right now. I don’t think it’s ever going to be the center of internet culture in the way that it was, but it’s chugging along, and there are still people who practice their fandom predominantly on Tumblr. But I don’t think there’s a good replacement for it either. You see a lot of the insular fan community experience on Discord now, like private channels for small groups of fans that you have to be invited to in order to participate. There’s a lot of fan activity on Reddit, too, which isn’t as insular but it’s another platform where there are pseudonyms and throwaway accounts. I think there’s a retreat from being in the public because Twitter has gotten so much attention for being a place for fans, and much of it has been negative, so plenty of fans are looking for quieter places to interact.

I was just at VidCon, where all these fans of a Minecraft YouTuber collective called Dream SMP went absolutely feral — it was predominantly young girls losing their minds over British boys again. It reminded me of the Directioner days of yesteryear. What do you think that those newer fandoms (and established ones that are still transforming, like Nicki Minaj’s Barbz and BTS Army) can learn from One Direction fans?

KT: The great tragedy of the One Direction fandom is that it ended up splintering because of conspiracy theories that were just divergent ideas of reality, like that Louis Tomlinson and Harry Styles were secretly in love, or that Louis Tomlinson didn’t really father a child). It became so impossible to reconcile the resentments that were built around such sensitive lines, and that was sad to watch. If I were participating in a fandom now, I would suggest making note of how this became a major weak spot for One Direction fans.