User:Yesimhaalc/sandbox

Directioners refers to the community of fans of the boyband One Direction who participate in amusing activities that revolve around members of the group, such as reading and writing Fanfiction, making video edits and fan art, socializing on platforms such as Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook and more. There has been a documentary released on the fans titled ‘Crazy About One Direction(CAOD)’ by British channel, Channel four depicting the day-to-day lives of One Direction fans and how they operate the fandom on different social media platforms.

The One Direction fandom can be seen as the cause of the group’s initial success in the United States of America before their album had even been released. One Direction can be connected to the second wave of British Invasion that occurred in the United States of America alongside the boy band The Wanted. Their projects have been known to receive mass levels of hysteria from adoring young fans due to the success of their five studio albums, four world tours, concert movie and solo careers.

Origin
Members of One Direction, Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Louis Tomlinson, Zayn Malik and, Liam Payne auditioned as solo members for the 7th series of The X Factor UK. After getting eliminated as individuals judge Simon Cowell decided to bring the members back and introduce them to the competition as a group. One Direction performed successfully on X factor finishing in third place within the series. The attention they received from adoring fans was never seen before in the history of the show as fans started to swam the studio where The X Factor was filmed

Fandom
New media has heavily contributed to the success of One Direction as fans would share their collective artwork about the members of the boy band and create ‘update’ accounts on the social media site twitter(link) to track their every move. New media technologies have created an ‘online’ perspective of being a fan, which was not accessible before. Using specific applications Directioners coordinated their personal relationships by exchanging information, coordinating events, and asserting their identities through the use of mobile applications available on smartphones. Through these social media accounts individuals were able to harbor successful relationships over their passion for the group creating transcontinental connections that strengthened the band globally. What strengthens online fandom are five characteristics the sense of space, shared practice, shared resources and support, shared identities, and interpersonal relationships.

Due to their commitment to the fandom, adolescent girls have been known to learn different media skills through these social media sites and engagement with other people in the fandom creating a peer supported environment for people to thrive. “Yea it kind of was complicated in the beginning but I asked around and people helped me to learn how to make them [animated .gifs]. On the design forum of Wattpad, mostly. Some of the people on here are so nice, they showed me the websites to learn. Mostly you have to go on YouTube first and then get the clip you like or that people will think it’s funny or that will get funny if you add a caption to it or something and then cut it exactly right. It takes so long some-times. And then you cut it and add the words. I mostly look at 1D stuff, of course. And people on Wattpad reblog it on Tumblr and say it’s good.”

Fan fiction and Conspiracy Theories
Fan fiction stories of members of One Direction started to surface on sites such as wattpad, fanfiction.net and archive of our own in 2011 with the success of the band on X factor. Stories featured on these sites depict the members of the boy band having intimate romantic relationships, stories based off of experiences fans imagine having with the boys, and stories based off of the boys in day to day life. This has resulted in the speculation that band mates Louis Tomlinson and Harry Styles were involved in a romantic relationship for numerous years. Connections were first made due to supposed ‘flirtatious’ tweets that were exchanged between the band mates on Twitter where most of their fandom initially operated. These conspiracy theories caused strain within the group and with their romantic partners as girlfriends of the group got harassed and received death threats.

Inspirations
A story titled as ‘After’ was published on Wattpad based off of a young woman’s relationship in college based on a character inspired by Zayn Malik and Harry Styles. The story received over 1 million hits breaking the websites record. The book has now been published by Simon & Schuster and is a New York Times Best Seller. The initial story has been read over 1.6 billion times on Wattpad. The rights to the film were sold to Paramount in 2014 to be turned into a feature film. On Fanfiction.net there are 4,437 stories about One Direction, where as on Archive of Our Own there are 63,414 and on Wattpad 292,000. More stories can be found on other social media sites such as tumblr and livejournal.