I never meant to fall down the rabbit hole of a celebrity conspiracy theory, but that’s the case for most people who fall into conspiracy theories, especially first timers. You never mean to seek out something to be suspicious of. In my case, I was just a 14-year-old loner clicking through random YouTube videos on a late Friday night. Until the sun rose, I was on all corners of the platform – from pimple popping videos to time lapses of people cleaning grotesque looking vehicles – and I somehow stumbled upon a chronicle of now deleted videos from YouTuber freddieismyqueen that led me to my future fixation: “Top 30 Iconic Larry Stylinson Moments”.
Larry Stylinson is the combination of the names of two members of former boyband One Direction, Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson. This name was originally made up by people who shipped them together – shipping being the act of simply liking the idea of two or more people being together – but as time went on, it was taken over by people who genuinely believe that Harry and Louis are in a relationship that was covered up by their former management, Modest! Management. These people are called ‘Larry Shippers’ or ‘Larries’, and I was one of them for three years. Going over the entire Larry timeline and compiling all the evidence over the past near decade would have to be an entire comprehensive post of its own, so here’s a little taste in the form of a reuploaded version of the common fledgling Larrie’s introduction.
Looking back on this now, a lot of what’s presented in the video can be interpreted in so many different ways, and the viewer is kind of led to interpret it purely from the uploader’s point of view, but this was all I needed to see at the time. From there, I created a Tumblr account and began my deep dive into the grand conspiracy of Larry Stylinson, and for three years – through “beards“, rainbow bears, ridicule from other sections of the One Direction fandom, and a whole ‘fake baby’ scandal – I held onto the belief that Harry and Louis were in a not-so-secret relationship , and whenever that belief wavered, I always threw myself into blog posts made by “Big Larries” (a name for notable Larries, usually ones who collect evidence, claim to be some sort of ‘insider’, or just have a really fun personality that people connect with). Thanks to these posts, I always came to three common conclusions that eased whatever doubts I had: Every denial from Harry, Louis, or their family members was done to keep them in the closet, every intimate relationship was fabricated or faked, and Harry and Louis would’ve been so happy to see us supporting them from their seats in the closet. And so I stayed, waiting patiently for Harry and Louis to come out and affirm everything I knew to be true, and as this magical day seemed to grow closer and further at the same time, I indulged myself in the company I was surrounded with.
Pretty much every single person in the One Direction fandom who wasn’t a Larrie ridiculed Larries. I remember getting a sick feeling in my stomach whenever we were dismissed as “vile tinhats with no lives” because that wasn’t how I saw the community. I saw it as a positive safe space filled with so many interesting people from different backgrounds (at least the tumblr section was. The Twitter section was infamous for being a dumpster fire). There were doctors, lawyers, agents, college students, mothers, and anything else you could think of. I wasn’t in the company of a bunch of people who stayed in their mothers’ basements, their only source of light coming from a TV screen. I was in the company of regular, everyday people, some of them accomplished, so if they were seeing the same thing I was seeing, then there was no way I was off base. Another criticism thrown at Larries was that we were “fetishizing” Harry and Louis, that we merely were projecting our fantasies onto two men and sexualizing homosexuality, and while there were certainly people who were guilty of this (a lot of people), there were also a lot of Larries who were in the LGBTQ+ community themselves, and they found comfort and saw themselves in Harry and Louis’ ‘journey’. In my eyes, I was a part of a strong, multi-faceted community that was so very supportive. I made friends (which had always been hard for me) and was a part of lively group chats where the conversations were not just about Larry, but about life and art and whatever else came up. We were an island of our own and whenever we got beaten down by outside forces trying to tell us we were “unhinged”, we huddled into each other. In hindsight, this may have been what made me stay for so long, because if it wasn’t for that, the experience would’ve just been endless waiting while getting cursed out from all areas of the internet, and I’m not sure how I would’ve turned out if that was the case. Would I have woken up sooner or become a bitter mollusk in my little echochamber shell? This is a very real thing I’ve questioned and I’m still not sure what the answer is.
In the documentary Behind the Curve, which is about the flat earth conspiracy and the people who believe it, there was a segment where the suggestion was made for scientists to act as ‘mentors’ to flat-earthers instead of ridiculing them, to try to engage with them on a more civil level in order to bring them around to the side of science. I agreed with this because, from personal experience, putting people down and labeling them as ‘crazy’ tends to make people stray further from your point and into their comfort zone, which is, in this case, the conspiracy that the earth is flat and the community made around it, but I feel like this point neglects the responsibility that falls on the part of the flat earther. While it’s correct that scientists must extend their hand, it’s ultimately up to the flat earther to accept it. Any attempt to ‘mentor’ would be fruitless if they don’t. No one tried to reach out to me, but I’ve seen plenty of instances where Larries were being pointed to evidence that Larry wasn’t real from dissenters with seemingly pure intentions and polite approaches, but every attempt was met with a swift click of the ‘block’ button or promptly explained away. You can’t lead someone out of a burning building if they’ve tricked themselves well enough into believing it’s a bonfire. Sure you could try forcing them out, but they’ll just kick and scratch at you because they still don’t think they’re in any real danger. This cute little metaphor isn’t to say that conspiracy theories are inherent death sentences, but it works to explain that once someone is trapped in their own reality and comfortable within it, there’s not much you can do for them.
Ultimately, I stopped believing in Larry after a long time of bargaining with my own brain about the narrative I wanted to believe. I went from believing they were married to believing they were an on and off thing to, finally, coming to the realization that these were people I didn’t know. Whether there was something there or not, the personal lives of two strangers shouldn’t matter so much to me, and I honestly feel like the culture of celebrity and how accessible it makes famous people contributed to me thinking differently. I had to separate myself emotionally – which included the achingly hard task of cutting off all the friends I made within the community – and after I did that, it was easy for me to come out of the Larry bubble completely, and once I left, I could clearly see how insane it was to wait around for something to happen based on a bunch of hypotheticals and flawed interpretations. This motivated me to abandon my Tumblr account, and I hadn’t even thought about it until I decided to write this post.
When I accessed my old account in order to dive into Larry evidence and observe the current state of the community, I was shocked to see that a lot of the blogs that archived the proof were either deleted or changed to something that was in no way Larry related, and the masterposts that are still up are practically defunct because 90% of the links no longer work. Additionally, bringing my jaw to the floor, freddieismyqueen (the iconic figure among Larries) has deleted all of her videos because she was unfortunately threatened to be doxed if she didn’t. But despite these changes, the community is still the same as when I left it, and one of the first things I saw when I went to my dashboard was a gif of Harry and Louis from eight years ago , one I saw a thousand times, with the caption, “You must be blind if you can’t see it.” This is something 14 year old me would’ve liked and reblogged with pride, but current me couldn’t help but roll her eyes. To me, this gif was a good representation of what the community is now, and kind of what it always had been, just holding onto old moments from years ago, because Harry and Louis haven’t had a strong interaction since the band split back in 2015, and a group of people affirming themselves as being the only ones who can see “the truth”. I was astonished at the fact that this was something I was doing just three years ago, but I’m not too hard on myself because of both my age at the time and how convincing the more notable people in the community were.
While “Big Larries” always said that everyone was welcomed to believe whatever they wanted to believe and even seemed as if they loathed their ostentatious title, they also talked about non-larries and “antis” (people who have seen all the evidence and still deny the existence of Larry) as if they were stupid. Imagine a person smiling in your face and saying, “You’re allowed to have your wrong opinion.” That’s what it was like being in the bubble and having any doubts about its core beliefs, but it got to a point where, out of pure frustration and exhaustion, I ended up heaving a heavy sigh and saying to myself, “Well, I’m just gonna have to be wrong.” Do I still have questions? Yes. Is there ‘proof’ that still makes me wonder? Also yes (especially those rainbow bears). But I’m not a player in this game, and there’s too much evidence to suggest that what I was seeing wasn’t really there, as is the case with most conspiracy theories.
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