A few weeks
ago, right before Christmas, I met a hardcore One Direction fan. I believe we
all remember the Channel 4 documentary Crazy About One Direction that depicted
the Directioners (aka the One D fans) as crazy teenagers, being completely
obsessed by the band members and proving to be quiet abusive online towards
those who would not fit their standards. I wanted to have a heart-to-heart with
a fan, someone who was not a teenager, someone who could be the voice of a
fandom and let me into the world of a One D fan…
Thanks to
social media, I met with Neneh, 24 and from London, who kindly answered my
questions about what it is like to be a fan of one of the greatest boybands
this planet has ever seen…
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| Me (left) and Neneh (right) |
First
things first, how did Neneh discovered the band? “I’ve always watched X
Factor, every year and yeah, I just saw them on X Factor, thought they were
good. I wasn’t too crazy about them until their first single came out. (…) And
it all went downhill from there, to be honest.”
Neneh is
very active on social media: she is a blogger and a YouTuber, has almost 8000
followers on Twitter and a very popular Snapchat account. Whenever she meets
One D, she shares it online with all the other fans. Neneh has met all the boys
(yes, even Zayn!) several times. But how does she actually get to meet them? “I
don’t find it too hard because, I’m used to it by this stage. You know if they
have an event coming up, if they are going to be performing, they’re probably
going to be doing rehearsals so it’s mainly…we’d go there because we know they
have to do it a few days before, just check the studios. Some of my friends
live near so we’d just take the bus to the studios, check if their cars are
outside. If they’re not, then just go home and report to everyone else if
they’re there or not and just keep checking until they’re actually there. So
it’s not like a coincidence; we just know they’re going to be there, even
though there is a lot of trials and errors at trying to find them.”
My next
question was – and I think I was very curious to understand how one can gather
so much detailed information about a celebrity – how do you know where their
studios are and what their cars look like? A question that Neneh swiftly
brushed by replying: “They are creatures of habit. So they’ve been using the
same rehearsal studios since 2010 or since the Up All Night Tour. They don’t
change things: their rehearsal, their photography, all their studios are the
same. It’s pretty well known. If they’re going to be rehearsing, they will only
really be at that one rehearsal studio. Mainly. I found out because, when I saw
some people had met them, I saw the van in the background of the picture with
the name on it and I just went to check it and that’s how I discovered where it
was. That was in 2013, something like that.”
Then, I
immediately started to wonder if Harry, Niall, Louis and Liam were recognizing
Neneh. It feels she has met them often enough to be more to them than just
another face in the crowd of excited fans. “I think the first time I noticed
they were starting to recognize me is…I met Niall last year at the X Factor and
then, I met him again at the studio like the same week and he remembered me
because it was twice in the same week. And he was literally just like: “Hi,
you’re alright?” He was really nice. (…)I think Louis and Niall are the ones
that recognize me the most. They’re always really nice and ask me if I’m
alright.” But what
is their reaction? Are they happy to see her; or do they think “oh, her
again…”? The answer is a pretty sweet one: “If they know there is a lot of
people, they’ll make sure they’ll come to me and my friends cause they know
we’re the ones that are kind of always out. That’s usually what happens so
yeah…a positive reaction!”
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| Neneh tweeted pictures of her encounters with the One Direction boys |
Most of
fans and random people would be pretty happy to meet their idols – click! – get
a picture, brag about it a little, then move on. So, I can’t help but wonder:
Why does Neneh keep trying to meet the singers? Why is a picture not enough and
what is her goal when she meets them repetitively? “I would say to get a
better experience. It’s addictive and, every time you meet them, you want a
better experience and to continue progressing towards a more friendly
relationship with them. Yeah, it’s really addictive meeting them!”
At this
stage, it seems undeniable: One Direction is addictive. So, will Neneh feel
tempted to try and find them during their break? She looks unsure and bites her
lip before saying: “Me and my friends said that we won’t…but… I don’t know.
It depends: the other day, we were out with my friend and it was literally a
day or two after the start of the break and we went to Winter Wonderland. And
we found out that Selena Gomez was staying in this hotel and that Niall was at
the hotel. So we were like “Let’s just walk down to the hotel”. I think they’d
already left so we thought: “ok, never mind”. So…I don’t know…I don’t want
to…but…Maybe Harry and Louis…I really want to meet Harry, like all the time! I
love Harry!”
Because she
goes really out of her way to meet the One D boys, Neneh has been called a
stalker. The Oxford Dictionary says that to stalk is to obsessively follow,
watch or try to communicate with a particular person. Does Neneh feel like she falls
into that category? “Erm… I was thinking about this the other day because
everyone calls my friends and me the “London Stalker Crew”. I actually googled
the word “stalker” and I don’t really think it’s exactly the same. A lot of the
time, stalking is unwanted attention, like going after someone and it’s
unwanted by the other person. I think that if the boys didn’t want to stop,
they wouldn’t so all the times that they’ve stopped…(…) A lot of the time, if
they literally don’t want to meet people, it’s completely their choice so
that’s why I don’t think it’s bad cause there are so many times, like hundreds
of times, where they just drove past us and none of them would stop. It
happened on so many occasions so…I think it’s them that make the decision so I
don’t think it’s bad.”
As we are
nearing the end of the interview, our hot chocolates going cold and the coffee
shop getting louder, I want to give Neneh an opportunity to add, correct or say
one last thing. She looks up to me and says: “Yeah, just that me and my
friends aren’t weird crazy people just because we’ve met them so many times.
(…)Most of the hate I get on Twitter is just people saying “why won’t you leave
them alone?” or there’s always going to be the comment “oh, that girl again”
and things like that. Obviously, I’ve met them a lot but (…) there are so many
people who have met them so many more times than I have. And they’d get
completely overlooked. I don’t know why…Maybe I’m just prominent or something
like that but…I don’t think I’m a crazy stalker, I just really enjoy meeting them,
they’re really nice and every opportunity is different so you never know what
you’re going to get every time you meet them: sometimes, they’ll stop and have
a talk, sometimes it’s literally just a quick picture…”
There is
one thing that seems to validate the idea the general public has about the
Directioners: they can be real bullies on social media. Just a few days ago,
Saira Khan, the ITV presenter got hate and abuse on Twitter from many
Directioners, simply because she tweeted that she had seen Harry whilst
filming. She reported those abusive tweets to the police…
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| THE tweet that started all the abuse... |
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| And Saira Khan saying she is reporting the insulting tweets to the authorities. |
As I leave
the coffee place, I think of the conversation I have just had. And I feel
old…Because, when I was head over heels for Leonardo DiCaprio, it meant putting
posters up and kissing them when no one could see me (yeah, I know, I was only
13 and, weirdly, didn’t think about kissing a real boy at all!). It meant
watching his films and memorising his lines; it meant daydreaming about meeting
him and imagining what kind of person he was. With the birth of social media,
we have let our boundaries loose and our barriers down.
We know who
is where and when, at all times. I think that is why the One Direction fandom
is so intense: they live with that sense of immediacy, which means they can
find the boys, even during their hiatus! They can tell the other fans about it
on Twitter, post a picture on Snapchat and, in exchange, receive love,
admiration, jealousy and hate.
I believe
One Direction is a one of a kind phenomenon that goes way beyond the music. It
is the testimony of a new era: the proof that immediacy can be a blessing and a
curse; the clue that maybe we should take a step back and remember that Niall,
Liam, Louis and Harry are human beings and that their fans are too…
