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The online community formed around One Direction is partially why people are feeling grief over the sudden loss of the singer.
For a time between 2010 and 2015, it was hard to go anywhere without hearing a song by the British boy band One Direction. The five members of the group not only won over fans with their hits like “What Makes You Beautiful” and “Best Song Ever,” but also with their goofy social media posts.
Their candidness with the fans, along with their musical talents, helped make them one of the best-selling boy bands of all time.
One Direction stopped performing together in 2015, but it still hit fans hard when news broke Wednesday that one of the band’s former members, Liam Payne, died after falling from the balcony of a hotel room in Buenos Aires.
Many took to social media expressing their grief and disbelief over Payne’s death as soon as word came out.
How can one feel such pain over the loss of a celebrity they didn’t know? It can be a combination of things, including the relationship people feel they have with said celebrity, but also the bonds they found through fandom, said Joseph Reagle, an associate professor of communication studies at Northeastern University whose research focuses on online culture.
“For (a certain generation), this was an important group of people that (they) not only developed individual parasocial relationships with, but developed a sense of community around because their friends like that particular band or person,” Reagle said. “They could talk together, geek out together, or go to concerts together. Both the individual and the collective fandom can go over the line in terms of obsessive interest and harassment, and that sometimes happens. … But there’s the communal expression of grief. (On social media) we can collectively come together and discuss the objects of our affinities, and even communally mourn or grieve if one of these people die.”
The relationships people feel they have with celebrities they don’t know are called parasocial relationships, Reagle explained. The term was dubbed in the 1950s in regard to the affinity many had for certain television stars. But it became more relevant with the rise of the internet, which opened up new levels of access to celebrities.
“The more social media gives us insights into people at a distance, the more intimate the relationship might feel,” Reagle said. “The internet gives us a view into so many other people’s lives. We have many types of celebrity and microcelebrity, where it seems we’re afforded even a more intimate access to a person than we might have had before. It really does seem as if we have relationships with these people.”
It’s also the music the boys created that made people feel close to them, said Northeastern teaching professor of music David Herlihy. Many people are not just mourning Payne, but the connection brought on from his work.
“Music is an incredibly powerful phenomenon,” Herlihy said. “It really touches us to our core. Music is the soundtrack for a lot of people’s monumental life experiences. Songs that you associate with incredible times in your life and becoming who you are and leaving behind who you used to be have a huge impact. Everybody has this personal, emotional cathedral for themselves. Music is a part of that. And if you’ve done it with friends…it’s also a profound communal connection.”
Boy bands like One Direction are also specifically created to appeal to young fans between their charming personality, good looks, and poppy love songs.
“The target of boy bands is typically young female audiences,” Herlihy added. “That kind of connection goes back to Frank Sinatra. It’s really a longstanding frenzy that telegenic male singers (cause). The industry sees that and they try to leverage it.”
One Direction was created on the reality talent show “The X Factor” by judge and music executive Simon Cowell. The five members originally auditioned individually but were put together as a group act when Cowell saw their collective appeal. Herlihy said this is a common framework in creating boy bands: piecing together charming young men and putting them together to perform soulful love songs and catchy pop tunes that appeal to young female fans.
In addition to their music, One Direction put out vlogs from the band’s tours and even a movie, all of which shed light on the members’ personalities and made fans feel like they knew them.
Such parasocial relationships aren’t always a bad thing. Reagle said that parasocial relationships can be bad when they cross a line and people begin to fixate on a person. However, they can also give people someone to look up to or seek comfort in.
“That can be particularly useful for young people,” Reagle added. “People feel very strongly connected at a distance. It’s intimacy at a distance … (and) can provide some useful things, like giving young people a sense of community, giving them someone they can look to. But there are downsides and one of those is to think you have a relationship with the person when, in fact, you don’t and that you might then be hurt, as can happen in any relationship.”
According to a statement from police, Payne died from “multiple traumas” and “internal and external hemorrhages” after falling from the balcony of the third-floor room he was staying in at Casa Sur hotel. Police said a toxicology report will be released in the coming weeks, but the injuries the singer sustained in the fall do not indicate he was attempting to protect himself, meaning he could have fallen while unconscious. It also appears that Payne was alone when he fell.
The police said the hotel called 911 shortly before the star’s death to report that Payne, who seemed heavily intoxicated, was destroying objects in his room. Payne had already fallen by the time police arrived. When they checked his room, they found what appeared to be narcotics and alcohol, as well as destroyed objects and furniture, police said.
Following Payne’s passing, many One Direction fans took to social media to express how much the band’s music meant to them and how it was a solace to them during their younger years. The remaining members of the band also issued a joint statement on Oct. 17, saying they are “completely devastated” by “the loss of our brother, who we loved dearly.”
Many also acknowledged the online community they found in other fans during the height of the band’s fame.
But there was controversy in the weeks leading up to Payne’s death. His ex-girlfriend recently issued a cease and desist to Payne for harassing her via persistent phone calls and texts. Many fans expressed disdain for things Payne had allegedly done to her and disappointment in him as one of their childhood idols.
On the flip side, members of the band, including Payne and former band member Zayn Malik, spoke out about the pressures of being in the spotlight. In 2021, Payne appeared on a podcast and spoke about how the band members were often locked in their room on tour because of the intensity of their fans. During this time, he began drinking heavily.
Despite this, many are overall feeling the grief, particularly at the passing of someone so young, which can also bring up feelings about mortality, Reagle added.
“There’s a nostalgic sense of ‘this was someone who I felt very fond of when I was younger,’” Reagle said. “There’s that sense of death that is much more current for me because someone my age has died. Maybe there’s a sense of (appreciation for) their work, and now you won’t be able to enjoy it anymore.”