Not because Pitt is an inherently bad guy, but because I felt uncomfortable watching a journalist construct such an empathetic portrait of someone whose public history is much messier than the portrait acknowledges.

According to Esquire, Pitt is dazzling. The journalist, Ryan D’Agostino, describes his outfit as “somehow pretty much the coolest outfit ever.” His “famous golden hair” is introduced before his personality. His smile apparently makes you wonder “what he’s discovered about the world that you haven’t.”

The omissions that fill out the piece are exactly the kind of access journalism that makes you feel like you’ve been invited to sit with the popular kids, and yet when I finished reading it, I had to ask: if we are discussing his sobriety, his drinking, his family, his estrangement from his children and the emotional fallout of his divorce, why are we not also discussing the events that shaped Pitt’s life over the past decade and that are presumably, partially responsible for these confessions?

Subscribe now

Particularly how in 2016, Angelina Jolie, Pitt’s ex-wife, alleged that Pitt physically and verbally assaulted her and their children during a private flight from France to Los Angeles. She alleged he poured beer and wine on the children, lunged at a child, and grabbed her by the head and shoulders before shaking her and pushing her into the bathroom wall.

It was later claimed, in Jolie’s own 2022 court filing, that the incident also allegedly saw Pitt choke one child and strike another in the face. Pitt has denied the physical abuse allegations, and the FBI did not file criminal charges.

But “not criminally charged” is not the same thing as “nothing happened,” nor does it mean journalism has no obligation to provide context, and that’s what I’m struggling with.

Pitt’s cover story takes the familiar ingredients of a Hollywood redemption story and assembles them almost perfectly. The irony is that structurally, it is almost a film. There is a soft entrance, a high, a low, emotional connection, comic relief and finally, a resolution that briefly circles back to the low just to remind the viewer one more time: this seemingly untouchable character is, in fact, just like us.

Perhaps that was what D’Agostino wanted to portray: a play on the fact he’s interviewing one of the world’s top actors. But, this isn’t a film Pitt’s starring in; it’s journalism, and key parts of this story are missing.

Pitt’s divorce from Jolie is briefly mentioned, as is his estrangement from his children. It’s skimmed over that four of his six children have now taken legal or public steps to remove “Pitt” from their names, including Shiloh, Zahara, and Maddox, with Vivienne becoming the fourth to formally file to do so.

Subscribe now

The allegations that sat around the collapse of that family are notably absent from the narrative, though; D’Agostino doesn’t push for more information, and Pitt shares nothing he doesn’t want to. Then we move on.

That is a perfectly legitimate choice if the intention is to respect privacy or those details can’t be shared due to the ongoing legal battle between Pitt and Jolie regarding their Château Miraval business dispute. But that was not listed as a reason, which means it could be a journalistic choice, and when you are writing about one of the most powerful men in Hollywood, what you choose not to interrogate is just as important as what you choose to include - especially when D’Agostino tells us Pitt is drinking again after a seven-year sobriety stint.

Pitt shares that he drinks in moderation. “I can have a few. But I can’t have a lot,” he acknowledges. D’Agostino again does not appear to push for more information, which feels jarring given what would likely happen in a real-world situation.

If an ordinary father with a history of problematic drinking, a well-known family breakdown and allegations surrounding an incident involving his children, shared that he has started drinking again, would the instinctive journalistic response really be to treat that disclosure primarily as evidence of growth and moderation?

More than likely, the response would be concern and more questions, so why is it that when Pitt shares he’s drinking again, it is portrayed as a troubled period now over, with lessons learned? Why is the underlying tone that this is some great redemption without actually interrogating what is being redeemed?

Is it because it’s Pitt? Is it because he’s the top 1% of 1% of movie stars? Perhaps, and that is exactly the point.

Celebrity journalism has an interesting relationship with power. The more powerful someone becomes, the more access they can offer, the more valuable the interview becomes, and sometimes the less willing the machinery around that interview appears to be to interrogate them, especially when the celebrity finds a way to connect with the journalist, like in this piece.

Sitting in Pitt’s home, the actor points to a tattoo on D’Agostino’s arm. It’s a tribute to his late brother, who passed five years ago. Pitt says that, after that amount of time, you can just “swallow it.” And we immediately feel the relationship between them change.

This isn’t just Pitt anymore; this is a man who knows loss. He opens up about his parents, having lost his mum just last year. He opens up about feelings of suicide, but again, no definitive reason for these deep emotions is given.

Subscribe now

Pitt is, of course, allowed to keep the details private. But the vagueness also serves the narrative beautifully. We are given just enough darkness to understand that he has suffered, without being given enough detail to complicate the version of him we are being presented. We are asked to draw our own conclusion, based on an answer Pitt likely knew would offer the cleanest one - “family stuff”.

That’s not to say it’s not moving. It is, and that’s exactly the design. By the end, you aren’t thinking about what drove Pitt to sobriety or to suicidal thoughts; you’re thinking about his grief, his addiction, his family, his mortality, his humanity, and how strong he must be to have overcome it all.

Being moved isn’t the same as being told the truth, though, and while the piece touched on everything that has surrounded Pitt for ten years now and offered him a redemption arc, it asked no real questions, held him to no real accountability. D’Agostino was not legally obligated to ask Pitt these things, but journalistically, he was.

And since Pitt wasn’t interrogated about the parts of his life that might complicate that image, he was ultimately allowed to decide which parts of himself we saw: the grieving son, the recovering alcoholic, the vulnerable father, the charming host, and finally, the man who has survived.

Considering the past few months, or, let’s be completely honest, Ariana’s entire career, this isn’t exactly a surprise. What was surprising was that, less than 24 hours later, in front of 20,000 fans in Chicago, Ariana gave her own version, and while it probably wasn’t intended to be, it may have been the best performance she’s ever given.

With soft lighting, thousands of phones on her and perfect hair and make-up, the star delicately told fans that this decision wasn’t “reactive or impulsive”; instead, it was “thoughtfully planned.” She insisted that she’s not running from anything and said the tour had been one of the happiest, most healing experiences of her career. Convincingly, she said that multiple things can be true at once: you can love what you’re doing and still know when to set a boundary.

While the statements ultimately ended in the same decision, the two reasons behind them were entirely different, and I don’t think that’s an accident. I think that’s what makes this so captivating.

When Ariana’s team gave a statement to People, it wasn’t written for fans. It’s written for the countless entertainment journalists about to ask why Ariana’s pulling out of all public-facing work for the foreseeable future, including Sunday in the Park with George. It needed to answer the questions before they was asked, and that’s most likely why they went with the clean, case-closed reason of public scrutiny.

Subscribe now

Ariana’s speech did something else. Nobody in that room needed a reason. They needed to be told that negativity hadn’t won, that she still wanted to be there, that this wasn’t goodbye, that the relationship between her and the millions of people who have supported her for over a decade isn’t transactional.

It’s something media scholars describe as parasocial labour, defined as the ongoing work of making millions of strangers feel personally known.

Basically, it means that we’ve been trained by a decade of stan culture, by platforms built to simulate closeness and treat institutional language as the lie and personal address as the truth. We have slowly started to believe that institutional means hidden agenda, whereas personal means honest, despite the irony that the press release may be the more transparent format.

So while Ariana’s speech on a perfectly lit stage, mic’d, in front of thousands of people primed to react, with the full knowledge that it would be clipped and dissected within the hour, felt authentic, it arguably was one of the most carefully mediated environments a public figure can occupy.

Subscribe now

If we were to ask a media theorist, they’d likely call this calculated authenticity, which is when the performance succeeds by convincing us it isn’t one at all and feeds into the idea that “unscripted” and “real” have become their own genre, that take just as much strategy to pull off as a press release, possibly more, because it has to look like it isn’t strategy at all.

Ultimately, the press release was likely the more accurate version of events, while Ariana’s live speech to a room full of people who love her, when basically the entire internet is convinced she’s not okay, was exactly what it had to be: convincing, comforting, and completely unscripted-sounding, all at once, with zero room for a second take.

And in the respectful way possible, Ariana didn't just deliver a statement that night; she performed one, and she performed it well enough that most of us forgot it was a performance at all.

She didn’t trick anyone into feeling something they didn’t already want to feel. She simply understood something we’ve become remarkably bad at recognising: that performance and authenticity are no longer opposites. In celebrity culture, they often work together.

And maybe the real learning here isn’t that different audiences need different approaches, but actually, that Ariana knew it wasn’t what happened on that stage that mattered most to her fans; it was making us believe what was happening off it.

Today, that wrong shall be righted.

If you’ve somehow missed this saga (honestly, proud of you), here’s the speed run - if you want the full rundown, though, here is a 10/10 timeline:

Alix Earle and Alex Cooper were once bestie-business-partners. In 2023, Alex’s Unwell Network signed Alix’s podcast Hot Mess, but fast forward to early 2025, and suddenly it’s all over red rover.

Subscribe now

There are rumours of a fallout between the two: Alix’s dad not liking how Unwell runs things, talk of Alix taking on bigger projects, sources talking to news outlets left, right and centre. All the while, Alex says nothing, and Alix says nothing but also passively agrees with all of the above being true through reposts, snide comments and reactions designed to provoke Alex.

This all happens between Feb and Aug 2025.

In October, Alex low-key hits back with a video lip-syncing to Britney Spears’ “Circus” as a promo for an Unwell event. All good, except for the fact that Alix had danced to that exact song weeks prior on Dancing With The Stars, and the part of the song Alex synced was clearly chosen to make a POINT.

“There’s only two types of people in the world / the ones that entertain, and the ones that observe,” etc, etc, you know the verse. Now I’m no Shakespeare, but even I can see that’s Alex inadvertently saying, “I am the alpha it girl, sit down, sissy.”

Then just as the internet starts to move on, we’re back in Alex v. Alix world. In April, Alix reposted a video of a woman calling Alex an “ambulance chaser,” a “grim reaper,” an “awful” person, and more or less saying she preys on women in the trickiest parts of their lives so they’ll go on her podcast and make her more famous.

Alix reposting the video was clearly the last straw for Alex, and after poking the bear for almost a year, Alex finally gave in and responded. The DAY AFTER COACHELLA, Alex released a video basically saying “Girl, if you’ve got something to say, say it.” Alix was vague in response; she danced around the edges, making it clear she has something to say but wanting to be strategic about when she dropped it.

Around the same time the beef went nuclear, it was announced that Alix was working with Netflix on a reality show, Earle Meets World. In July, the release date was revealed as September 4, and in that same announcement, Alix confirmed she’d finally be addressing the drama in the series.

Which is obviously the part everyone’s covering, but the interesting angle isn’t that Alix is finally talking; it’s that she spent nearly two years deciding where she wanted to.

Buried in a Time interview tied to the Netflix announcement was a detail that completely changed the way I saw this saga. Alix revealed that when producers first started filming Earle Meets World, they wanted the Alex Cooper fallout to be part of the show from day one.

She said no. In fact, her exact words were: “That was one of the things in the beginning they wanted me to talk about, and I really wasn’t comfortable sharing.”

That quote tells us that this wasn’t a network convincing a reluctant star to spill the tea. If anything, it proves the opposite. Alix was offered one of the biggest platforms possible to tell her side of the story, but she turned it down because it wasn’t the right moment.

Pookies, most people think media strategy is about knowing what to say, but the best media operators know it’s often about knowing when not to.

For almost two years, Alix let everyone else tell the story for her. Fans speculated, and sources spoke anonymously. TikTok stitched together timelines. Alex responded. Meanwhile, Alix never fully confirmed or denied anything herself and managed to keep the conversation alive without ever having to own it.

Then, when she finally decided to speak, she’s doing it in a series literally built around her life, released on her timeline, edited around her story, and monetised by her audience.

Whether that was always the plan or whether the opportunity evolved over time almost doesn’t matter anymore; the result is the same.

Subscribe now

For nearly two years, everyone else has been reacting to a story Alix never fully told. Now, if people want the ending, they’ll have to consume it exactly where she’s chosen to put it, and that, dear reader, is why I don’t think Alex and Alix fell out because one of them understood the media better than the other.

I think they fell out because, for the first time, Alex found herself playing against someone who understands the value of controlling a narrative just as much as she does.

In 2014, Fancy by Iggy Azalea ft. Charli XCX was the golden child. In the years that followed, we got tracks like Closer by The Chainsmokers (still the best summer of my life, by the way), In My Feelings by Drake had its moment, Despacito became genuinely unavoidable, and Say So by Doja Cat ended up soundtracking lockdown.

But we’re in a bit of a crisis this year.

There doesn’t seem to be one obvious Song of the Summer. Instead, everyone’s listening to something different.

So, in what we shall consider a completely legitimate piece of investigative journalism, I sat down with Spotify Senior Editor Shannon Carragher to figure out whether the Song of the Summer is officially resting in peace. According to her, it kind of is because we’ve stopped living in a musical monoculture.

“If we look back maybe ten years ago, there was usually one obvious song you heard everywhere, in clubs, on the radio, shopping, everywhere you went. But this year, it feels like there’s much more breadth in what defines someone’s summer.”

For the critical thinkers in the room, this may not be news. Monoculture has always evolved alongside technology. First came radio and MTV, where a handful of gatekeepers decided what became a hit. Then blogs, Hype Machine and burned CDs made discovering music feel like a hobby. Now, the algorithm does the digging for us, serving up songs before we even know what they are.

Subscribe now

Thanks to streaming platforms like Spotify, the world’s entire music catalogue now lives in our pockets and as music taste becomes more closely tied to identity than ever before, we’re exploring far beyond whatever happens to sit inside the Top 40.

According to Shannon, that shift has fundamentally changed the way the industry works.

Over the past decade, the rise of microgenres - hyper-specific categories of music - has exploded. Spotify has watched the number grow from just a few thousand to well over 6,000 today, making your recommendations diabolically specific.

It also explains why Spotify’s Songs of Summer predictions look so different this year.

Across the UK, Ireland and Europe, contenders range from Zara Larsson’s Midnight Sun and Ella Langley’s Choosin’ Texas to Eurovision winner DARA’s Bangaranga, Aya Nakamura’s Sexy Nana and Chico da Tina’s VICIOS.

That’s a Swedish pop star, a Texas country crossover, a Eurovision anthem, a French Antillean hit and Brazilian funk, all on the same playlist and all being streamed by the same person on the same commute. Ten years ago, that would’ve been unheard of; now it’s all being heard before lunchtime.

Which is kind of the point.

We’ve never had this much access to music from different countries, languages and cultures, and we’ve never been more comfortable exploring it. Rather than everyone following the same soundtrack, platforms like Spotify have become a bridge between thousands of different musical worlds.

“We are either trying to reflect what’s happening in culture, or trying to create moments of discovery for artists and songs and help people find maybe a track that will be their new favourite,” Shannon explains.

It’s also why summer doesn’t have to sound the same emotionally anymore.

Subscribe now

Shannon told me her own listening is split between headphones-in-the-park introspection with Sam Fender and Olivia Dean’s collaboration Rein Me In and pure escapism with Bebe Rexha’s New Religion.

“I think the option’s there for both,” she chuckled.

Music discovery is also becoming increasingly shaped by everything happening around us.

Shannon points to Netflix’s Heartstopper as one of Spotify’s biggest recent success stories, with multiple artists finding entirely new audiences after appearing on the soundtrack. Now that Heartstopper Forever is on the way, she’s watching closely to see if lightning strikes twice.

“Music in TV and film is back in terms of how much it’s influencing not only a song’s connection with their audience, but also helping artists find a new audience and impacting the charts too,” she said.

It couldn’t be more obvious that we are no longer all walking the same musical path, and it's probably why at the beginning of summer, Spotify listeners had the chance to vote on their song of the summer from a shortlist of 20.

The results have dropped, with Midnight Sun, Bangarang and VICIOS earning the most votes, but they almost feel irrelevant. The real truth is that a collective Song of the Summer has died and that’s perfectly okay because now, we all get to choose our own.

And in ten years’ time, when one of this summer’s songs randomly comes on shuffle, it won’t matter whether it topped the charts or won Spotify’s vote. It’ll still throw you right back to this exact season of your life, which, between you and me, that’s all a Song of the Summer has ever really been after all.

For years, the internet has been flooded with conspiracy theories claiming Britney Spears isn’t actually Britney Spears. Depending on which corner of TikTok you end up on, she’s been cloned, replaced, secretly killed, or is living an entirely different life while someone else runs her Instagram account (those Photoshop fails are CONVINCING tbh).

It’s the kind of rabbit hole that’s incredibly easy to laugh at, and, with so many videos and “evidence” stacked on top of each other, just as easy to fall into.

Then, during a livestream this week, her 19-year-old son Jayden addressed the rumours and instead of mocking the people who believe them, he did something even better: he explained why they believe them in the first place.

“I hop on TikTok and I see this one video that has 1.2 million likes, and the caption is like, ‘The biggest theory ever: Is Britney Spears still alive?’” Jayden said. “It makes me know that a lot of the stuff on media is exaggerated and fake. People know how gullible people are, and they use that to their advantage.”

He added: “Anyone that sees it on media, they just see it and if it has a lot of likes, they believe it. They don’t even research it, they’re just, ‘Wow, yeah, it’s crazy. I believe it.’”

Subscribe now

Now we don’t know much about this kid, he has largely been kept out of the spotlight but it’s obvious, he knows ball because what Jayden’s describing is a psychological effect called the truth effect — a bias that leads you to draw the wrong conclusions.

Thanks to decades of research, we know that hearing the same information repeatedly makes you more likely to believe it’s true, even if you only heard it once originally, with zero evidence attached.

And the reason why we do that is pretty simple, actually; we assume that if people are putting this much effort into repeating something, it has to have some truth to it.

It is exactly what’s happening on social media. The problem isn’t that people have gotten less intelligent; it’s that we’ve built platforms that reward the most emotionally compelling version of a story, not the most accurate one.

Take the Britney theories. The “evidence” rarely consists of one undeniable piece of proof. Instead, it’s a collection of blurry screenshots, out-of-context documents (emphasis on that), anonymous comments, someone claiming they heard a podcast years ago but conveniently can’t find it now, another person insisting a radio station reported it before everyone involved was mysteriously fired.

Alone, not one of these claims is convincing, which is exactly why they’re never presented alone. They get bundled together, then shared and reshared until the volume itself starts to feel like proof.

There’s peer validation at play too. Someone stitches the video with “wait, this actually makes sense,” someone with a million followers reposts it, the comments pile up, and your brain stops asking “Is this true?” and starts thinking “It must be true if everyone’s talking about it.”

Subscribe now

The likes start to feel more convincing than “here’s the source” and it makes me want to bang my head against the wall if I’m being completely honest, because the internet has taught us to treat popularity as a shortcut for credibility, which is why Jayden’s comment matters more than it might seem.

On the surface, he debunked a bizarre conspiracy about his mum, but go deeper, and he described the entire attention economy in one sentence.

“People know how gullible people are, and they use that to their advantage.”

Whether it’s celebrity gossip, AI-generated images, fake “breaking news,” or completely made-up rumours, there will always be someone willing to package uncertainty as certainty for the sake of clicks.

So next time something compelling fills your feed, before you screenshot it, stitch it, or send it to the group chat, do yourself a favour and ask one question:

How do I actually know this is true?

It’s a surprisingly hard-to-answer question, and that’s kind of the point.

In a world where virality gets mistaken for validity, constantly, Jayden Spears just proved you don’t need a media literacy degree to catch it, you just need your critical thinking skills.

As a former member of one of the world’s biggest boy bands, that might not surprise you. But reader, the proof is in the pudding, and this is, in fact, a huge moment for the 34-year-old independent artist; it just might be the biggest moment of his career.

Not because he sold out the world’s most famous arena despite his relatively low number of 2.3 million monthly Spotify listeners, or the fact that he’s always been seen as an “underdog” post-One Direction, but more so, because it represents that Louis may have redefined what success actually means in a way his former bandmates haven’t quite done yet.

Subscribe now

And before you aggressively close this tab and shake your head, or celebrate too early, allow me to put my pop culture analysis girl hat on and explain.

Since the band split, the 1D fandom world seems to have revolved heavily around Harry Styles. Of course, Zayn Malik made a good attempt at gaining the top-dog title with a strong start to his solo career, Niall Horan also made a solid effort with radio-ready tunes, and Liam Payne (god bless his soul) knew exactly how to drop a dance-worthy hit. But Louis was often painted as the one trying to catch up.

It’s not entirely his fault. After One Direction, he himself has admitted he was lost. He lost his mum, his sister — he faced setback after setback. He struggled to find who he was as an artist without the scale, fame, and support of four bandmates that came with One Direction.

But 10 years on, Louis appears to have emerged triumphant.

While Harry is by far the richest, most famous, most decorated artist of the former boy band, Louis, it seems, has built a career that feels deeply aligned with the people who support it. And even more than that, his fans may be the most loyal of all the fandoms, which, if we’re being completely honest with each other, feels like it should be the entire goal in the first place.

Sure, he isn’t the most-streamed, or the most searched. He isn’t the one dominating TikTok every other week, and if you judged his career purely by Spotify’s monthly listener count, you probably wouldn’t expect him to be anywhere near Madison Square Garden.

But what all of that misses is that while Spotify measures listeners and TikTok measures trends, neither measures loyalty. Loyalty is who flies across the country to watch a show, who spends hundreds on tickets, who defends their favourite online, or who is still there after the algorithm moves on — and all of that is what sold approximately 20,000 tickets to Louis’ show this week.

It’s something the star knows well. His speech as he celebrated the night was a clear reminder of the mentality that has defined his solo career: Louis doesn’t see his fans as spectators; he sees them as collaborators.

If you look at the last decade, or even more specifically, the last 4 years, Louis has honed in on building a relationship with fans that feels fundamentally different to most modern pop stars. He regularly and thoughtfully replies to them online. He created the Away From Home Festival around community rather than spectacle. At Glastonbury Festival two years ago, he famously wheeled a television into his campsite so fans could watch the football with him. Even his Madison Square Garden speech wasn’t about his success. It was about our success.

“I feel immensely proud of what we’ve created. And tonight, just wow. It’s the definitive confirmation that all of this was worth it. I never feel like I can put into words how much you’ve done for me. I want everyone to leave here tonight knowing that,” he told his fans.

“You’re here tonight. You’re responsible for all of this. I guess I made it, but, really, we made it together.”

It’s the type of speech that makes you believe in the celebrity and all the parasocial that comes with them. The type of speech that any artist can give, but not all can deliver with such genuine emotion — proof that Louis knows his talent and determination got him to where he is, but also that none of it could happen without the support of his fans.

It’s also proof that Louis understands something many celebrities don’t: fandom isn’t built on access, but on reciprocity. His fans show up because he has spent the last decade showing up for them.

Subscribe now

So maybe in the coming years, Harry will continue to be the most famous, or “most successful” by analytic standards — that’s almost impossible to argue against — but Louis’ sold-out Madison Square Garden show has shown a different type of success entirely.

Fan devotion.

And really, in a world full of five-second trends and fast-moving culture, what would you rather have?

And of course we’re deeping it.

You all know that on July 3, Taylor and Travis Kelce tied the knot at New York’s Madison Square Garden, in front of roughly 1,000 guests. From long time besties Selena Gomez, Gigi Hadid and Ed Sheeran, to Sabrina Carpenter, Gracie Abrams and more wtf guests like Brad Pitt, anyone who’s anyone was there.

Adam Sandler officiated (iconic), while Austin Swift stood as Taylor’s Man of Honor and Jason Kelce as Travis’s Best Man. There were no bridesmaids, no groomsmen. The couple wore custom Christian Dior Haute Couture, and the moment they said “I do” was broadcast to the crowds outside via digital billboards reading “JUST&T MARRIED!”

Guests left with an ivory handkerchief embroidered with the couple’s initials, the date, and a line from Travis’s favourite Taylor song, “Blank Space”: “So it’s gonna be forever…” and obviously, Swifties followed along for the entire weekend, so imagine our surprise when one of us made the biggest easter egg connection of all.

All I have to say to that is: CAN WE GET A CLEAN UP IN AISLE 13? We have a mic drop.

Just kidding, I have a LOT more to say.

Subscribe now

Since Swift’s 2006 debut, she’s built an entire culture around hiding clues, also known as “easter eggs,” across her music, visuals, and public appearances, inviting fans to decode them.

It started with the CD liner notes of her early albums, where capitalised letters in the lyrics spelt out hidden messages. It was subtle, clever, and, importantly, solvable.

From there, it evolved into something much bigger, and Swift herself told The Washington Post, “my fans and I have since descended into colour coding, numerology, word searches, elaborate hints and Easter eggs.”

So of course, fans went looking for them at her wedding.

Most of what’s surfaced has been innocent enough: the handkerchief likely becoming merch on an anniversary, a vinyl of whatever song she walked down the aisle to, rumours she’s sold the video rights to a streamer. But something like the Independence Day theory is so jarring because it’s not really a prediction; it’s something that actually feels goddamn plausible.

Whether you want to see it as a dark and spiteful prediction or something yet to be proven depends on whether you see the wedding as one of love or one of business, and this, dear reader, may help you make up your mind.

In 1961, historian Daniel Boorstin coined the term “pseudo-event” - an event staged primarily to be reported on, where the reporting isn’t a byproduct but the point.

Swift, while seemingly wanting a “private event” with her watermarked digital invites and NDAs for a thousand guests, is also the same person who rented out the world’s most famous arena, invited over 1,000 celebrity guests, and issued a public announcement within minutes of her marriage being made official.

Does that sound like the infrastructure of a private moment that got covered by accident? Or the infrastructure of an event designed to be reported on?

Subscribe now

It’s also worth noting that this isn’t a new question for these two to find themselves at the centre of. The “this is a PR relationship” theory has trailed Swift and Kelce since the friendship-bracelet story first broke in 2023. They’ve faced the kind of speculation that gets waved off as cynical, while also feeling a little too convenient when you consider their love story began with Kelce publicly declaring his heartbreak on his podcast, only for it to be revealed months later that he and Swift were, in fact, already dating.

So for us to then know almost everything about their love story in the years that followed - the engagement, and now the wedding - it again seems a little too convenient, a little too perfect for celebrity reporting.

Then there’s the significance of July 4th weekend.

Since 2013, Swift’s 4th of July party has been the place to be. The first year was low-key, just her Red Tour dancers. But by 2014 it had opened up to Emma Stone and Lena Dunham. In 2015, Ed Sheeran, Gigi Hadid and Joe Jonas joined the party, and in 2016, Blake Lively, Cara Delevingne, and then-boyfriend Tom Hiddleston got in on the action.

A five-year gap ensued between 2017 and 2022, while she dated Joe Alwyn, who kept their relationship almost entirely out of public view, but the party immediately came back the moment they split.

Which means the beauty of the party is that it has never just been a party. It’s the one weekend a year that’s been consistently coded as hers. It’s independence, in the literal and the branding sense. So when a wedding that low-key reads like a pseudo-event lands one day before it, in a year when she’s publicly folding Travis into that same tradition, the fan theory doesn’t really feel like a stretch but more like pattern recognition.

After all, Swift is someone who has spent two decades training an audience to read her this way. It would be strange if, at the one moment everyone’s watching hardest, she suddenly stopped leaving clues, which is why I think she hasn’t.

Some dark, twisted part of me keeps coming back to this handkerchief and thinking maybe the lyric isn’t there because it’s Kelce’s favourite song, maybe it’s not an innocent declaration of love, or a token of appreciation.

Maybe it’s the biggest easter egg of all, because if we’re being completely honest with each other, the reality of this marriage is that there are only one of two outcomes:

So it’s going to be forever, or it’s going to go down in flames.

And what Easter egg-obsessed billionaire wouldn’t pre-plan what would no doubt be her biggest album to align with that unlikely, but not impossible, outcome?

The gorgy girls, who were part of Little Mix alongside Jade Thirlwall and Leigh-Anne Pinnock, spent much of their teenage years and early adulthood together. They built one of the biggest girl groups in the world, shared an insane amount of life-changing experiences, and developed the kind of bond that can only come from growing up under circumstances we can literally only dream of.

And then, the rug was pulled out from under them, and it came to a very dramatic end.

Since Jesy’s departure from the group in 2020, there has been no shortage of headlines, interviews and speculation about what really happened behind the scenes. In more recent years, Jesy has spoken candidly about the toll fame took on her mental health and how she felt abandoned by the girls, while the remaining members have reflected on the hurt and confusion they experienced at the time - including finding out Jesy was leaving from her lawyer.

Subscribe now

Then, earlier this year, Jesy’s documentary revealed new details about her departure, reigniting a conversation that, I’ll be honest, never really disappeared in the first place.

Months later, Perrie has naturally found herself answering questions about it too.

Her comments were vulnerable; you could tell they had been thought of often and deeply. But it wasn’t Perrie’s intentional care that stuck with me. It was the lack of care in response to them. In particular, this one: “The amount of times those girls keep talking about Jesy Nelson, they can’t just move on. It’s so sad.”

And before you come for me, there were, of course, plenty of fans who defended Perrie. But the whiff of criticism had me going full Carrie Bradshaw, and I couldn’t help but wonder: what exactly are the rules of female celebrity conflict?

As someone who grew up with Little Mix, I also grew up with One Direction, and I watched Zayn Malik’s departure play out in real time (worst day of my life, btw). When Louis Tomlinson later spoke about the pain and complexity of that fallout on the Diary of a CEO podcast, it was widely framed as honesty, vulnerability, admirable candour. And I can only assume that’s because pop culture has long made room for male conflict.

Let’s not forget British music’s most notorious rivalry between Noel and Liam Gallagher, or Robbie Williams and Gary Barlow. There is also Drake and Kendrick Lamar, who wrote entire diss tracks about each other and literally debuted at number one.

Female conflict, meanwhile, often feels as though it’s expected to conclude with an apology, leave with a hug and a kiss, and never be mentioned again, and that tells me the response to Perrie isn’t really about Perrie at all. It’s about female celebrities in general.

Subscribe now

It’s no secret that womanhood comes loaded with emotional expectations that manhood largely doesn’t. Strong emotions get treated as a loss of control rather than a logical response to pain. Female vulnerability gets repositioned as unprofessionalism. Anger becomes unattractive. Hurt becomes bitterness.

So when Perrie talks about Jesy, she’s dwelling, but when Louis talked about Zayn, he was reflecting. It’s essentially the same conversation but with a completely different verdict and I’ve got a theory on why.

In the big ol’ year of 1983, sociologist Arlie Hochschild threw us the term emotional labour to describe the work of managing your own feelings to fulfil the emotional expectations of others. She was writing about flight attendants (which, as we know, was a largely female-dominated industry back then), and how they were paid to remain pleasant in conditions that would test anyone.

Since then, the concept has expanded considerably.

It’s particularly relevant here, because what is the “just move on” comment if not a demand for exactly that? It’s not concern, it’s an instruction to contain your own experience so that we don’t have to sit with the discomfort of a story that hasn’t resolved the way we wanted it to.

For celebrity women, the expectation isn’t just that they process things privately; it’s that they perform resolution once the audience gets tired of the feud. And if they can’t do that, or won’t, the sympathy evaporates. It shifts from that must have really hurt her to she needs to move on, this is getting catty.

Something that, unsurprisingly, has a parasocial element to it.

Audiences develop genuine emotional investment in these women’s relationships (me, hi!!). Little Mix wasn’t just a band that ended; for a lot of us, they soundtracked our entire teen and early adult years. From breakups to major wins, they were there, and when that fractured in the way it did, publicly and painfully and without a clean ending, we were left with unresolved feelings too.

So I think (and correct me if I’m wrong bbys), the “move on” comment isn’t really about Perrie, it’s more about the person typing it. It’s like a demand for closure that they haven’t found being projected outward.

Subscribe now

Honestly, the cruellest irony of the whole thing is that we literally create the conditions that later punish celebrities. The story stays alive because we keep searching it, discussing it, commenting on it, asking about it in interviews, and then the woman at the centre of it answers a question and gets told she’s the one keeping it alive.

It’s bang-your-head-against-the-wall type shit.

And of course, this doesn’t mean celebrities are above criticism, or that public comments can’t reopen wounds. They can. But there is a meaningful difference between answering a question and intentionally fuelling conflict - and increasingly, the two are treated as one and the same when it comes to women.

So perhaps the rules of female celebrity conflict aren’t impossible to follow after all. They’re just not the same rules for men and women, and until they are, female celebrities will continue to find themselves trapped in an unwinnable game: expected to be authentic, but never messy. Honest, but never angry. Vulnerable, but only in ways that make the rest of us comfortable.

It’s no secret that the star has undergone a transformation since her iconic Sweetener era. She’s swapped her signature ponytail for a neat little bun, dropped the thick eyeliner for a more subtle look; even her outfits are quieter, but those are all apparently very minor details in comparison to what the internet is really fixating on: her body.

Since filming Wicked began in 2022, Ariana has faced relentless public commentary about her weight. While she’s always been a petite lil thing, internet users have decided that actually, she’s too small now and are loudly speculating about eating disorders, trauma, medications, and her “competitive” relationship with co-star Cynthia Erivo.

For four years now (probably longer, let’s be honest), we have watched entire narratives unfold based on photographs and short video clips by people who know almost nothing about her health, her life, or her state of mind, yet present as if they know everything.

The booked-and-busy star has rarely engaged with the speculation, but when she has, her message has always been short, sweet and simple: the version of her body many people nostalgically compare her to, her 2019/2020 era, was the “unhealthiest version” of her body.

It was a time when she was drinking a lot, eating badly, on antidepressants and at the “lowest point” in her life. She asked fans to please stop comparing her to that, but it seems the plea fell on deaf ears, because the criticism has never been louder, and that says a lot more about us than Ariana.

In the past 24 hours, I’ve read through hundreds of comments:

“She’s triggering.” “She makes me feel bad about myself.” “If I were Cynthia, I’d lose weight too.” “I’m worried about her.”

These comments all begin as observations but almost always end up reflecting the commenter’s own feelings. Where the intention is to comment on her body or mental health, it instead becomes a comment about their own insecurities. Their fears of not being seen, or understood, looked after or loved. Their fears of ageing, weight loss, weight gain, judgement, the exhausting reality of living in a body, and it’s turned Ariana’s body into a canvas onto which millions of people project their own feelings.

A not-so-shocking revelation considering it’s something Ariana seems to have clocked well before the rest of us. In 2024, she said that there is a “comfortability” society has developed with critiquing other people’s bodies that is “dangerous for all parties involved.”

Subscribe now

Now, my Bachelor of Arts in media and film wasn’t given a lot of credit as a useful degree, but I’m using everything it taught me here, because at its core, this isn’t just a cultural habit of over-sharing opinions. It’s about what kind of society produces that habit in the first place.

Stay with me.

So, philosopher Michel Foucault used a panopticon - a prison designed so that inmates could be watched at any time without knowing when they were actually being observed - to show how power and social control work in modern society.

He found that within this design, inmates didn’t just submit to surveillance; they began self-surveilling. They policed their own behaviour not because they were always being watched, but because they could never be sure they weren’t.

With social media, we are essentially living in our own panopticon.

We curate holidays, outfits, meals, and milestones. We take photographs we never post because they aren’t aesthetic or perfect enough. We think about captions that will make us sound cool. Many of us move through the world with a low-level, near-constant awareness that we are observable, even when no one is actually looking, and over time, that awareness doesn’t just change how we present ourselves. It changes how we see other people.

When you spend enough time feeling watched, watching becomes second nature, and celebrities, the people who are endlessly visible, endlessly documented, become the easiest available objects for that reflex.

Which is the part of this conversation that doesn’t get examined enough. The comments about Ariana’s body aren’t just a symptom of entitlement or cruelty but a symptom of a culture so saturated in self-surveillance that we’ve lost the ability to simply observe without feeling compelled to evaluate.

Social media has convinced us that visibility creates intimacy. It makes us feel like because we can see someone, we know them and because we know them, we can evaluate them. Even more so, it makes us feel like because we can evaluate them, we should.

But visibility is not ownership, and access is not entitlement, and maybe the most biggest truth about the conversation surrounding Ariana isn’t what it’s revealing about her.

It’s what it’s revealing about us.

A hot minute ago, I opened Instagram to see a creator (that I admittedly have a lot of respect for), tell her followers how insanely “lucky” she was to be attending a film premiere and how little she would have “never believed this is her life”.

I don’t doubt the feeling is real. There genuinely are moments in creative industries where your life feels completely detached from the one you imagined for yourself at fifteen.

What’s nagging at me is that it’s starting to feel very much like a default caption for her, which is incredibly frustrating because every time she calls herself “lucky”, she’s indirectly dismissing all the hard work it took for her to get there.

Subscribe now

Before you come for me, I know that in this world, privilege very much exists. The right timing, money, connections, algorithms, beauty, and opportunity all play a role in who succeeds online and who doesn’t, and pretending otherwise would be naive.

But privilege and hard work aren’t mutually exclusive. You can be lucky, but you also have to be talented and hard-working enough to sustain an opportunity, something the internet seems deeply uncomfortable with, especially for women.

It’s likely why female creators in particular are expected to present their success as something that simply happened to them. As though they accidentally tripped and fell onto a red carpet, like the years of editing, building, networking, pitching, posting consistently, managing burnout, and essentially running themselves as a one-woman media company had nothing to do with it.

I can only assume we frame it as “luck” instead because we’ve seen firsthand what happens when a woman in a privileged position refuses to feed that narrative.

Take Kim Kardashian telling women to “get your f***ing ass up and work”. It was tone deaf, but the reason the backlash hit so hard is that people hate hearing glamorous women attribute their success to discipline rather than fate or humility.

Then there’s Taylor Swift, who people love most when she’s framed as vulnerable or underestimated, but the second she acknowledges the strategy behind the empire she’s built, suddenly she’s “calculated.” Which, OF COURSE she is. You don’t accidentally become one of the most powerful entertainers on earth without calculation.

My biggest problem with the “lucky” narrative, though, is that it doesn’t just affect how creators frame themselves; it also benefits the companies we work with.

By continuously feeding the “lucky” girls, it’s very easy to forget that you’re not being invited to events or brand trips out of the kindness of these corporations’ hearts; you’re being invited in exchange for your image, your audience, your reach, your content and your cultural relevance.

Subscribe now

And when you’ve spent years framing your career as an unbelievable gift you randomly stumbled into, how do you negotiate better pay? Or say no without closing the door to more “exciting experiences”? How do you admit you’re exhausted and burned out from countless hours of video editing, content planning, networking, and creating?

And most of all, how do you acknowledge that your presence itself has value?

The more creators perform endless gratitude just to remain likeable, the easier it becomes for brands and audiences to ignore what it actually takes to sustain a career like that.

Maybe that’s a cynical way of looking at it, or maybe I’m just tired of watching talented people downplay their own effort because sometimes I walk into a space and think: this is insane, younger me would actually lose her mind. But sometimes I also think: yeah, I worked really hard to get here.

Both things are true, and I think we should probably start letting people say so.

It wasn’t a lesson in resilience, or in how to stay relevant, or even in forgiveness, but a lesson in how to be loved without being absorbed.

I know, that’s A LOT to take from a red carpet, but the moment she asked her fiancé, Maxx Morando, to step aside so photographers could get solo shots of her was loud, very freaking loud, and it split the internet straight down the middle. There were those who found it cold and those who found it aspirational, and it proved something that’s been circulating for a while.

Celebrity culture has always been a slightly exaggerated mirror of what we actually believe about the world/relationships/ourselves. One of those things is believing that a woman’s success is more meaningful when a man stands in the frame beside her.

Coupledom was the ultimate metric. The “happily ever after” was the end goal we were all chasing, whether we admitted it or not, and being in a relationship stopped meaning two people choosing each other and started meaning one identity split between two people.

Subscribe now

What makes Miley’s move so interesting is that she’s lived the alternative, knows exactly what it costs and has clearly learnt from it.

For the better part of a decade, Miley and Liam Hemsworth weren’t just a couple. They were the moment. She was framed as the chaotic one; he was the stable one. She was “too much”; he was the grounding force. Their relationship became less about who either of them actually was as a person and more about how they existed relative to each other, which was actually quite charming right up until it wasn’t.

When their relationship ended, the reaction was predictably messy. Miley’s once endearing wildness and chaos were suddenly dubbed “unstable”, “messy”, and “unhinged”, whereas Liam was more “traditional”, sick of her “antics”, wanting to settle down. He was the angel, she was the devil.

In reality, what she was more likely doing was just figuring out who she was when a decade-long relationship stopped defining her. Anyone who has come out the other side of something like that knows that’s not a scandal, it’s just a hard, slow road of necessary work.

The kind that pays off in the form of a number one single, Flowers and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Redirection, not rejection. Et cetera. We know how this part goes.

Subscribe now

The version of Miley we’re watching now feels like someone who did that work and came out the other side knowing exactly who she is, both alone and with someone else.

She doesn’t keep Maxx hidden. He’s at events, in interviews, and photographed beside her constantly. She’s not pretending she’s single or that their relationship doesn’t matter. She’s just maintaining something that used to be much rarer than it should be: the distinction between being in a relationship and being consumed by one.

It’s the same thing people (perhaps unknowingly) admire about Eva Mendes and Ryan Gosling. They are considered one of Hollywood’s most solid couples even though you can go months without a single photo of them together. Emily Blunt and John Krasinski are the same. They’re both fully formed public figures that happen to also be married. Even Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce — despite dominating headlines for the better part of a year — still present as two separate people choosing each other rather than one merged public identity.

It seems celebrity culture has been shifting for years now, subtly suggesting that the healthiest modern relationships aren’t about becoming one person but about being completely yourself and still being deeply loved.

When it’s presented in black and white, like the “is having a boyfriend embarrassing now?” piece, it’s a huge cultural moment because underneath the irony is a question genuinely worth sitting with: how much of themselves have women been expected to surrender in relationships, and is that a trade any of us actually agreed to make?

Subscribe now

More women are increasingly deciding they didn’t. Keeping their own friendships, their own travel plans, their own careers, their own interior lives and it’s not because they don’t want partnership, but because they’ve worked out that partnership was never supposed to come at the cost of personhood.

So yes, Miley asking for solo photos might be a small thing, but when you pair it with the realisation we’ve been told for decades that love is finding someone to complete you, Miley showing us that it’s more about finding someone who complements you, is actually a very big moment.

Under a video of Dom talking about live music inaccessibility, MGK insinuated that the star’s sensitivity to the industry-wide problem is completely and utterly performative. He alleged that Dom had used mental health issues as a cover for cancelling tour dates when, really, he was struggling to sell tickets, because his prices are the “same as every other artist”.

Messy? Yes. Probably personal? Also yes. But it was in the subtext of that comment that MGK made the most interesting point in the live music conversation right now.

It’s not about ticket prices at all; it’s about the fact that artists know exactly what they’re doing. They’re building entire worlds out of belonging, community, and the feeling that their fanbase is something you’re either part of or you’re not, and then they capitalise on it.

While some artists position themselves as untouchable and exclusive, we are seeing more and more artists position themselves as people within reach.

Dom, for example, has successfully built an entire fandom based on community. He has leaned heavily into the “world for the freak” branding; he makes outsiders feel like insiders, and he’s often seen engaging in emotional intimacy with fans, seemingly never passing up an opportunity to hang out with them.

Subscribe now

He also makes a point of offering cheaper tickets to shows and his festival, Bludfest, to help ease the financial burden on his fans. Most standard general admission tickets ranging from £35 to £85, depending on venue and location.

It’s a price that fans are willing to pay, mostly because going to a Yungblud concert feels like you’re hanging out with mates in an inclusive space. The only thing is, MGK’s comment struck a nerve with some of Dom’s fans because it raised the question of whether the “community” is less a community and more a revenue stream and if that stream isn’t running to satisfaction, the artist no longer wants the community.

It’s something Harry Styles and Taylor Swift fans know all too much about.

Harry’s latest tour is called “Together Together”. On opening night, he told the crowd that the point of it is to “be together, having fun together”.

I criticised his speech for being contradictory because of its obscene prices, ranging from £44 to £279 for standard, and £333 up to £725 for exclusive perks/VIP. In response, one fan told me I’m “hating from outside of the club”, another said they “wouldn’t be complaining if they got to go.”

Two comments that are so simple, yet so deep. The fans were defending an objectively expensive experience and took my criticism as an attack on the community because, inside the fandom, Harry’s shows aren’t just concerts; they’re a place to bond, reap the rewards of being a fan, and experience something uniquely special, and the emotional reward far outweighs the cost.

Subscribe now

The same goes for Taylor’s Eras Tour. While tickets were pretty much on par with Harry’s, ranging from approximately £58 to £194 for standard seats, with VIP packages costing up to £662, the Ticketmaster ticket wars proved that price didn’t matter. The emotional toll of missing out on such an event was devastating.

Before the tour even began, fans were sharing TikToks planning their outfits, organising to bring friendship bracelets to swap, discussing which merch to buy, and what songs Taylor would play. There was a huge amount of buildup to the point where it didn’t feel like a tour anymore; it felt like a cultural event.

And it was, because that’s what tours are now. They are so layered: they have fashion subcultures, social events, and community building. They are an exclusive piece of pop culture history that, if you’re a fan, you desperately wanted to be part of, no matter the cost.

@sed2001I’m not a performative eras tour fan IT CHANGED MY LIFE #taylorswift #theerastour #gillettestadium #erastour #swiftie

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

So even though tickets are as affordable as they can be in the current climate, they are still receiving criticism, because the ticket was never really the point. The emotional commitment is, and the desperate need not to be the one who misses it. That’s where the real money is, and someone in those artist teams absolutely knows it.

Which is perhaps why it all feels a little bit icky, because we’ve been made to believe we’re part of something when really, all we’re part of is the revenue stream.

Oh, sweet reader, he couldn’t have been more wrong.

Like all good radio journalists looking for a social hook, they masterfully cornered the global superstar into what felt like an FBI interrogation about his former bandmate Harry Styles’ alleged future wedding.

The hosts, Lucy Maynard and Ollie Miles from The Edge Nights, cheekily asked whether he had any weddings coming up this year and like the golden retriever sweetheart he is, he was blissfully unaware of where the conversation was heading.

@theedgenz@niallhoran on our edge nights show 😱😱 spills the tea on harrys wedding!! listen to the full interview tonight on the show 👀 #niallhoran #harrystyles

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

He happily chatted about friends who were getting married before Lucy and Ollie pushed further, asking whether any “former colleagues” were tying the knot.

The look on Niall’s face was priceless, because it was then that his moment of realisation came.

“Oh, no, no, no,” he stumbled. “No, just mates of mine.”

Continuing to probe, Lucy locked in and asked: “You don’t know the date, though?”

As a fangirl and a journalist, I’ve got to give it to her, that was a ballsy question, and it’s honestly a wonder his publicist didn’t shut down the interview then and there because not only was the question completely irrelevant to what Niall was there to promo, but it carried an assumption that Niall owes us access to both his and Harry’s private lives.

Subscribe now

It was a question loaded with the idea that his proximity to his former bandmate is simply part of the deal, a toll he pays for our continued attention.

Naturally, the clip went viral, partly because it was One Direction-related, partly because Niall’s delayed realisation was objectively hilarious. Yet, after watching it a few times and reading the comments, something has been nagging at me, something that the fandom has been tiptoeing around for years.

How come, no matter what these men do, their solo careers are still treated as supporting acts to the public’s fascination with One Direction itself?

One Direction were together for around five years. They have now spent twice as long apart, building entirely separate (and hugely successful) careers, separate lives, separate identities. Niall is a 32-year-old man who left that band when he was 22, and yet every interview, eventually, circles back to one of the following:

Have you spoken to Harry? What’s Zayn like these days? Is there a reunion? Who went to dinner together? We saw a photo of you at Louis’ show, how is he?

In the shadow of Liam Payne’s death last year, those questions have taken an even heavier turn, centring on: How has losing him changed you? How has it influenced your music? How has it made you closer to the other boys?

Subscribe now

Grief, for most people, is the most private thing there is, yet because Liam was one of them, because he was part of the thing we loved, we have decided, perhaps innocently, that their mourning is also, somehow, ours. That we have a right to it, and it belongs inside the One Direction story we’ve been co-writing for fifteen years.

I say we deliberately because, reader, I’m not writing this from the outside. Absolutely not. I’m a fangirl and One Direction lover through and through, and like most of you reading this, they hold a special place in my heart.

They were comfort before we knew what comfort meant, our first parasocial crush, our first fandom, the first place many of us found each other online. I followed the Tumblr blogs, saved concert wristbands, watched late-night YouTube diaries, and read fanfiction until all hours of the morning.

One Direction wasn’t a band you just listened to; they had an entire cultural ecosystem around them, and we supported them in a way that no previous generation of fans quite had the internet infrastructure to do. So, when you spend years emotionally invested in a story, you start to feel, without even meaning to, like you own a piece of it.

Subscribe now

Which is why Lucy’s question isn’t just nosy and entitled, but almost justified, and that’s why I feel so uncomfortable about it, because if I’m being completely honest, I wanted to know the answer too.

The media understand this completely, and so do I (like hi, hello, it’s exactly why I’m writing this piece instead of doing literally anything else today). Nostalgia drives clicks, streams, the parasocial engagement that built One Direction in the first place and has kept them culturally alive long after the band stopped existing.

Everyone in this ecosystem, journalists, interviewers, Substack writers, fans, are pulling the same thread. Yet I can’t stop coming back to the fact that while we talk a lot about what One Direction meant to us, we talk much less about what it costs them to still be One Direction, a decade after they chose not to be.

So maybe the most honest thing we could do as a fandom, and the thing that would actually honour what One Direction meant, is to stop asking, “will there be a reunion”, and “are you going to Harry’s wedding?”, but actually:

Have we reached the point where our nostalgia has become their cage?

When the band first found international fame in 2013 after touring with One Direction on the Take Me Home Tour, the group - made up of Luke Hemmings, Michael Clifford, Calum Hood and Ashton Irwin - became the internet’s favourite emotional support boyband/not boyband.

We were living in PEAK fandom culture, peak Tumblr, peak Wattpad era. Fan edits dominated, and those cringy imagines were promo for dark, twisty, sexy fanfics. The fandom had inside jokes that became global lore, and if one of the boys did so much as change his haircut, it was quite literally breaking news.

Much like One Direction, they existed in that chaotic era where fans projected personalities onto celebrities because, while we were fed, there was still some distance between star and audience, and we had to fill in the blanks ourselves. The mystery was part of the appeal, but now the tables have turned.

The mystery is no more, fangirls!

While 5SOS never fully disappeared from the spotlight, there’s no denying their latest album, Everyone’s A Star, and the subsequent tour feels like a comeback in the truest sense of the word. The boys returned with spiky dyed hair, leather pants, smudged eyeliner, and the energy of four former Tumblr boys who know exactly how the internet works now.

And more importantly, they act like they’re in on the joke.

Every time a fan opens TikTok, there’s another video of the band participating in a trend, lurking in comment sections, reacting to fan edits, stitching memes, or just generally behaving like they have the same For You Page as the rest of us. At times, it feels less like observing celebrities and more like watching mutuals with verified accounts, which has sparked a bit of a debate online (and, okay, mostly in my head): are they too accessible?

@5sossick of dis shit

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

For decades, celebrity culture relied on distance. Celebrities were aspirational because they were untouchable. We watched them through magazine covers, red carpets, heavily media-trained interviews and carefully curated Instagram posts. It was very much an era of you can look, dream and dabble, but you couldn’t really know them.

Now, the curtain has been absolutely obliterated, and 5SOS aren’t the only celebrities embracing the chronically online strategy.

Less than three years ago, Joe Jonas and Sophie Turner announced their divorce. Joe immediately became public enemy number one online, and any publicist would be quaking in their boots because redemption is hard. Except it’s literally not. With a new Jonas Brothers era underway, Joe has leaned so heavily into internet humour, self-awareness and “commitment to the bit” posting that public perception has not only softened but leaned in his favour.

Then there’s McKenna Grace, whose entire online presence is built for former fangirls. She openly talks about making fan edits of Josh Hutcherson before eventually starring in a Five Nights At Freddy’s with him, which only further fuels the fantasy that maybe, just maybe, fandom itself can become proximity to fame.

Brittany Broski also proves this in a recent video, sharing that she needs to tone down her fangirl ways after realising she is constantly interacting with the celebrities she unapologetically thirsted over.

@broskireportSupreme Leader @Brittany addressed the nation on the reality of being a fan girl nearing age 30. More on The Broski Report. Link in bio. @secret brittany

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

Then there are newer stars who understand the assignment. Actors like Hudson Williams engage with thirst edits, musicians comment on fan theories, and celebrities reference viral memes. The line between celebrity and fandom has become increasingly blurred, and honestly, some stars are significantly better at navigating that than others.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, you have celebrities like Zendaya, Jacob Elordi and Elle Fanning who still maintain a level of distance and mystique. They are undeniably huge stars, but their online absence often means that, instead of the mystery, boundaries and allure it once meant, it now creates detachment, and that could be a problem.

Where celebrity culture used to thrive on exclusivity, now it thrives on participation.

Fans no longer want to consume celebrity culture; they want to feel involved in it and to have a sense that the people they support are actually in the same cultural space they are. They want celebrities who understand the meme before it hits Reels three weeks later.

5SOS seems to understand this better than most. Instead of letting fans make up stories about who they think they are, the boys present themselves exactly as they are: chaotic, self-aware, unserious, occasionally unhinged and very online and ironically, that authenticity seems to have strengthened the fandom rather than weakened it.

Their most recent TikTok proves it perfectly. After seeing thousands of fans begging Luke to bring back his iconic lip ring, the band posted promising it would happen, but only if fans sold out the Malaysia tour date.

And guess what? The fans sold it out.

So it’s safe to say that modern fandom no longer operates like a fan club. It operates like a collaboration, and as a chronically online fangirl myself, watching celebrities finally realise that the internet is supposed to be fun again feels a little bit magical.

Naturally, the 10.4 million viewers, at the time of writing, have encouraged the streamer to consider a second season, and my immediate reaction is, HOLY SHIT, PLEASE NO.

Of course, the show is great. It’s literally gagging for a continuation, and if they do choose to renew it, chances are I’ll be sitting with my popcorn ready for round two. Then again, much like 13 Reasons Why, I truly believe that a second season will ruin the impact of a show that already tells a bloody good story.

At the moment, we’re in limbo. Nothing is confirmed, and everything is being teased. Fra Fee, who plays Sam in the show, has already suggested there are ways to continue the story, and he’s not wrong. There are threads left open, questions unanswered, paths the narrative could take.

The keyword here is “could”. Unchosen only works because it doesn’t over-explain itself…. at least, it doesn’t yet.

Based on real accounts of cult life in the UK - cue the creepy shivers -, the series follows Rosie (Molly Windsor), a young woman raised inside a super reclusive, super religious sect. Then, like all good stories, she runs into a super hot and mysterious outsider (Sam, btw), who woos her, and makes her consider what life would be like if she weren’t part of a system that LOUDLY devalues her.

Subscribe now

In Rosie’s world, also known as the Fellowship of the Divine, technology is banned, genders are segregated, outside ideas are treated as threats, and oops, almost forgot, power belongs to men and only men. DUH.

Speaking of men, her husband Adam (Asa Butterfield) rises within the group, and as his big dawg authority grows, so does the trouble between them. What comes next are deeply uncomfortable, often brutal realities, including coercion, abuse, repression, and the slow, disorienting process of questioning everything you’ve ever known.

When I tell you it lands, girl, it lands.

Written by Julie Gearey, and directed by Jim Loach and Philippa Langdale, the series veryyyyy clearly draws on extensive research into real-life British cults, some of which include testimonies from former members, and I can only assume that amount of research and immersion into these worlds is what gives Unchosen its super sharp edge.

There are times when it doesn’t even feel like a drama at all, but a literal docuseries. Between you and me, reader, it gave me shivers.

Subscribe now

Since its release, the show has sparked a big ol’ spike in interest around high-control groups, with many viewers falling down the rabbit hole of researching real-life cases, including the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, Gloriavale, and other convos about coercive control in society.

You only have to check Google Trends to see the searches around cults is at a high, and at a time when there is plenty of uncertainty (a time known to increase cult membership), that holds a lot of weight.

Which is why I’m doubling down and saying extending the story will fundamentally change the impact of Unchosen.

The more you stretch a narrative like this, the more it starts to shift in all the wrong ways. What once felt grounded in reality begins to feel engineered for entertainment, and it stops feeling like it could be happening just down the road from us and starts to feel more like it’s happening in a fictional universe.

We already know there is a fine line in Unchosen between drama and realism, and yes, it walks a very delicate line in its current form, but a second season would push it further into dramatisation.

That means more shock, more intensity, more sensationalism, and when a story is rooted in real trauma, the line between impact and exploitation matters.

So, in a streaming era that doesn’t know when to stop, ending might just be the boldest move it can make.

While discussing speculation around who her songs are written about, Swift said that although she appreciates her fans, “there are corners of my fan base that are going to take things to a really extreme place.”

“There’s nothing that I can do about that,” she continued. “There’s people who are going to try to like, do detective work, figure out the details - who is that about? What is this? When it gets a little bit weird for me is when people act like it’s sort of like a paternity test. Like, ‘This song’s about this person.’ Because I’m like, ‘That dude didn’t write the song. I did.’”

At first glance, it sounds like Swift is calling out her fans for constantly trying to figure out who her songs are about, and, to be fair, that wouldn’t exactly come out of nowhere.

For nearly two decades, Swift hasn’t just allowed that kind of behaviour, she’s actively encouraged it.

Since her 2006 debut, she’s built an entire culture around hiding clues, also known as “easter eggs”, across her music, visuals, and public appearances, inviting fans to decode them.

Subscribe now

It started with the CD liner notes of her early albums, where capitalised letters in the lyrics spelt out hidden messages. It was subtle, clever, and, importantly, solvable.

From there, it evolved into something much bigger. Visual clues in music videos, symbolic outfits, cryptic captions, numerology, it was an entire ecosystem designed to be picked apart and analysed.

Swift herself told The Washington Post, “my fans and I have since descended into colour coding, numerology, word searches, elaborate hints and Easter eggs.”

Let’s clock the key part, shall we? “My fans and I”.

Looking for and decoding Easter eggs isn’t something that happened to her, it’s something she built with her fans, which is why her recent comments, calling parts of her fanbase “extreme” for doing exactly that kind of “detective work”, feels a little off-brand.

And it’s why I don’t actually think she’s talking about easter eggs at all. If you look at what she says next, the issue isn’t the decoding; it’s actually the conclusion.

She compares it to a “paternity test”, and adds, “that dude didn’t write the song, I did,” ultimately shifting the entire meaning of what she’s saying.

For Swift, it seems this isn’t about fans looking for clues; it’s about fans reducing her work to a person, and that’s something she’s tried to avoid for a long time.

Since her debut, Swift has carefully walked the line between inspiration and anonymity. While certain songs have been widely linked to past relationships, she’s very, very rarely confirmed those assumptions, instead choosing to keep that final layer of meaning just out of reach.

Subscribe now

In 2015, she spoke to GQ, where she said: “I don’t feel there is any injustice when people expand beyond my music and speculate on who certain songs might be about.

“I’ve never named names, so I feel like I still have a sense of power over what people say- even if that isn’t true, and even if I don’t have any power over what people say about me.”

“The fact that I’ve never confirmed who those songs are about makes me feel like there is still one card I’m holding.”

She is well aware people are going to speculate, but she doesn’t want that speculation to become the point. Unfortunately, somewhere along the way, the easter egg culture stopped being about interpretation and started being about answers.

Fans are asking: “Who is it about?”, “When did it happen?”, “Is this lyric proof of something?”

The fun of decoding has now turned into a need to solve, and with it, the song itself has become secondary.

Swift has spent years building a fandom that looks for meaning in everything,
but now she’s reached a tension point where she has to gently remind them that meaning isn’t the same as proof.

She’s not rejecting the culture she created; she’s just trying to pull it back from a place it was always going to end up.

This is a musician who has had no major scandal, no public fallout, no career-defining controversy that would reasonably explain the backlash she continues to receive, and yet, spend five seconds in a comment section about her, and the tone is wildly disproportionate.

This isn’t exactly new for the internet. Every few months, the collective picks a celeb and decides they’re annoying. Most of the time, they’re not dangerous, or unethical, not even particularly offensive, but for some reason, they are someone the internet thinks is a sucker. From Benson Boone to Addison Rae, the pattern is consistent, even if the reason might not be, so how did Meghan get here?

Meghan’s rise to fame in 2014 was both immediate and defining. At just nineteen years old, she released “All About That Bass,” an absolute bop that not only topped charts but positioned her as the anti-pop star. She was immediately positioned as a face for the body-positivity movement, and she very quickly resonated with a wide audience.

Subscribe now

Now, over a decade later, Meghan is no longer the teenager who introduced herself to the world through a culturally sticky anthem. She is a mother of three, a wife, a seasoned artist with seven studio albums to her credit, and someone whose life has changed in ways that are both visible and deeply personal.

None of this is unusual. It’s exactly what you’d expect from someone growing up, building a life, and surviving over a decade in one of the most brutal industries in the world, so why has the reaction been anything but neutral?

In a recent interview, Meghan described feeling like she’s living in an “upside-down world”. She said, “The Shimmer video I just shot, I cried my eyes out at the end, because I trained for weeks, I danced in the entire video, and I’ve never felt or seen myself so hot and so confident in my entire life.”

The social media commentary, however, told her she was at her worst. From commenting on her weight loss (triggered by her gestational diabetes diagnosis, btw), to the song sounding “just like every other one” she’s put out, and even hating on her outfits, the critique is very clearly less about the artistic output and more about the disapproval toward the person delivering it.

And it brings me to this: What, exactly, are people reacting to?

One possible answer lies in the role Meghan was initially assigned. From the outset, she was positioned as “different”; she was the relatable alternative to a polished, often slim, exclusionary pop landscape. Her identity as a musician became intertwined with her body, and for many listeners, she didn’t represent a sound, but a set of values.

When an artist occupies that space, any deviation from it can feel significant. The change isn’t interpreted as growth but rather as abandonment. The individual is no longer seen as someone evolving but as someone betraying an expectation that, in many cases, was imposed upon them.

Meghan’s decision to pursue changes to her health and body with the support of the weight-loss drug Mounjaro, along with lifestyle changes, complicates the version of her people liked in the first place.

Instead of sitting with that discomfort and asking whether it’s more about us than about her, the response has taken the form of criticism.

Subscribe now

Whether we want to admit it or not, the backlash toward Meghan is something she herself has already identified: “the comments are more vicious than ever - right when I’ve never felt so strong and so good,” which kind of proves the point.

People didn’t just like Meghan Trainor for who she was; they liked her for what she represented, and the second that changed, so did the way they treated her.

From OnlyFans arcs to stripping to sugar baby dynamics, nearly every major character has been pulled into the same narrative orbit, which is why it’s getting harder and harder to ignore what’s happening off-screen.

The only person really interrogating this publicly is Chloe Cherry, who, notably, isn’t even at the centre of these storylines.

Now, as this is the Hot Mess Digest and this week in pop culture hasn’t been quite as chaotic as last week (we were FED, let’s be honest), it does mean we get to zoom in on one topic a little more than usual.

Don’t panic though, we will of course still get into Harry Styles and Zoë Kravitz’s alleged engagement, Sydney Sweeney getting cut from Devil Wears Prada 2, and Kylie Jenner being sued by her former housekeeper, but for now, we simply must address the story that is quite literally begging to be written.

Subscribe now

Season three (and potentially the final season) of Euphoria is currently rolling out week by week, and a major theme is very clearly the adult industry.

We’ve got Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) dabbling in OnlyFans, Rue (Zendaya) working at a strip club, Jules (Hunter Schafer) as a sugar baby, and Maddy (Alexa Demie) managing Cassie and previously another OF model.

BEFORE I start sounding like I’m about to drag the entire cast, I do have to say there hasn’t actually been a proper media round for this season, so any comments we’ve had have come from random interviews or red carpets, which means maybe, just maybe, it’s not entirely their fault.

But even with that in mind, I can’t help but notice that not a single one of them is really talking about the specifics of their character’s storyline, and when you line that up next to how central these themes are, it does start to feel a little bit intentional.

In fact, in a chat with Refinery29, journalists Taylor Lorenz and Kathleen Newman-Bremang pointed out that Chloe “is one of the few cast members willing to interrogate what the Sam Levinson series is actually saying,” and it is nagging at me.

For a show so heavily relying on the adult industry to tell its story, it feels odd that the only person openly unpacking the complexities of that is someone who isn’t even playing those roles, and it does make you wonder, if you’re willing to play the part but not speak on it, is it actually an authentic portrayal?

If the actor (seemingly) can’t get behind it publicly, how are we, as viewers, meant to just sit back and accept it without questioning anything?

Now, I’m not naive, I know how this works.

The bigger the star, the tighter the control. Interviews are pre-approved, topics are carefully managed, and anything that risks complicating the narrative often doesn’t make it past the PR gatekeepers, and journalists know that if they push too hard, they risk losing access altogether, so it is entirely possible these conversations aren’t happening because they’re simply not allowed to.

But there’s another possibility, what if they just don’t want to defend it?

Subscribe now

There’s no denying that the version of Euphoria we’re watching now is not the same show it was when it started. The characters are older, the storylines are darker, and the reliance on sex work as a central narrative device is way more pronounced.

Sure, actors are trained to understand rather than judge their characters, but that doesn’t mean they always agree with where those characters end up, and that can translate to them not feeling comfortable unpacking that in an interview.

That being said, I keep coming back to this one thing: If a show is comfortable building its identity around these themes - profiting off them, aestheticising them, turning them into its most talked-about moments - then it’s completely fair to ask why no one attached to it wants to publicly engage with the reality behind them.

Anyway, enough media analysis, let’s get messy.

Harry Styles and Zoë Kravitz were spotted out in London this week and Miss Girl was wearing a very noticeable ring on that finger sparking exactly the type of engagement rumours you would expect.

An inside source later “confirmed” the engagement to Page Six, which, sure, exciting if true, love is alive, etc etc, but hello??? The timing???

It just so happens to land right after the Zayn Malik and Louis Tomlinson drama completely dominated the news cycle. It also happens just as the jewellery brand Zoe is an ambassador for drops a new collection, and I’m not saying it’s PR, I’m just saying, you can read all about it right here, queens.

And just when you thought we were done with Sydney Sweeney this week, think again, because the blonde bombshell filmed a cameo in Devil Wears Prada 2 only for her THREE MINUTE scene to get cut, which is honestly brutal.

She was reportedly playing herself and being styled by Emily Blunt’s character Emily Charlton, but the scene didn’t fit the final structure of the film and got scrapped, which is industry speak for “we loved it, but not enough.”

And finally, we have Kylie Jenner, who is facing a lawsuit from a former housekeeper alleging discrimination and a “toxic and abusive environment.”

Before we all spiral, Kylie herself is not accused of any specific behaviour in the filing, she’s listed as a defendant alongside companies connected to her household, but still, not exactly the headline you want going into summer.

And there we have it queens, another week of pop culture chaos, light on mess but heavy on “hmmm, that’s interesting.”

As always, go touch grass, drink some water, and live, laugh, love your weekend.

You start with one date, then another, then a screenshot, then a headline and all of a sudden it’s been three hours, you’ve got seventeen tabs open, and you’re convinced you’ve discovered a media pattern no one else is talking about.

Hi, hello, it is I, your fave fandom writer.

One theory I’ve been hyperfixated on this week is this: every time another One Direction member lands in headlines, Harry somehow appears too, and it has me wondering, is it a coincidence or does our boy just hate when the attention isn’t on him?

Now, before you accuse me of building a conspiracy board with red string and emotional instability, let me present the evidence.

Subscribe now

The Theory

Between you and me, directioners. The pattern is very simple.

One of the boys, whether that’s Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik or our angel in the sky, Liam Payne, makes news, and wham bam thank you ma’am, Harry appears.

Sometimes it’s within days, sometimes within hours, but almost every time, it feels suspiciously well timed.

Some examples I’ve noticed include:

April, 2026

Zayn’s recent album dropped on Friday, and on Saturday, he shared he was in the hospital. The same day, reports resurface that he and Louis had a physical altercation, and their Netflix docuseries has been cancelled. Louis also unfollows him.

Naturally, there were headlines, headlines that aren’t exactly easy to look away from. Just days later, aka April 21, Harry and his girlfriend, Zoe Kravitz, were spotted together, and she’s wearing a HUGE ring on her ring finger. Engagement rumours begin to circulate, and suddenly, that’s all the fandom and tabloids can talk about.

January, 2026

We can’t forget the moment Harry announced his lead single from his new album would be dropping the exact same day Louis dropped his album.

You could have heard a pin drop in the fandom. We were torn, especially when Louis admitted that he had no idea about the drop and was given no heads-up, and, even more so, asked us to help him “cut through the noise”.

March, 2025

Rumours begin circulating that Louis is dating Zara McDermott - huge news, especially in the UK. Louis has always felt slightly allergic to mainstream celebrity culture, which made a Love Island-adjacent romance feel particularly surprising.

Around the same time, Harry runs the Tokyo marathon, he’s also papped with James Corden in London despite being relatively low-key in the months prior.

June, 2023

The summer of 2023 was also a big moment. Niall Horan released The Show on June 9, marking his third solo album. One day later, Harry has a major outdoor performance at Ireland’s Slane Castle. It’s also around this time, Harry starts being spotted with Taylor Russell.

On July 8, Liam released a YouTube video detailing his sobriety journey and rehab stint, revealing he is six months sober. That same month, Harry rounds out Love on Tour, Madame Tussauds also unveiled seven new Harry wax figures across global locations on July 17.

September, 2018

In September 2018, Louis debuts as an X-Factor judge; meanwhile, Harry attends an Eagles concert with Kaia Gerber on September 15th.

I truly could go on, but the point is that after a while, you stop noticing coincidence and start noticing timing. It’s not because I want to create a narrative, but because every time I see Harry news after the other boys, I think: “you literally cannot make this shit up.”

Subscribe now

The Media Reality

Of course, there’s another explanation, one that may be less emotional, but probably more realistic.

Entertainment media works on a very simple rule: Editors push stories that generate clicks, and I think we can all agree, Harry generates clicks.

He generates so many clicks that he doesn’t necessarily even need to “do” anything for headlines to happen. He’s a much bigger celebrity than his former boyband members. He isn’t just a musician; he’s a fashionista, actor, famous person with a mysterious private life, he is paparazzi currency.

A photo of Harry buying coffee can become international entertainment news in a way that the others rarely experience.

If the other boys are already in the news cycle, it’s an easy win for outlets to whip up a story of Harry papped somewhere, republish an old story with a new take or something that would usually be skipped over, simply because they know One Direction (and the members of) are already front of mind.

There’s also a key difference worth acknowledging, and it’s that many of the examples I’ve pointed out above involve paparazzi sightings, relationship rumours, or public appearances, things that are not always strategically planned.

Celebrities are photographed frequently, and sometimes tabloids decide a photo is worth running. Sometimes, we as a fandom turn that teeny tiny moment into a headline because we’re deprived of 1D content and need updates more than we need them back together.

Is There A Pattern, Or Am I Creating One?

Humans are really good at pattern recognition. It’s a skill that’s literally helped us stay alive for thousands of years, learn new information, and make quick decisions, often enabling us to detect patterns even in noisy or incomplete data.

It’s great, but it also means that once we start to notice something, we go balls to the wall trying to collect evidence that we’re onto something and that, my dear readers, is where confirmation bias enters the chat.

We remember the overlaps and conveniently forget the weeks where Louis, Niall, Zayn or Liam dropped an announcement, and Harry did absolutely nothing.

The Bigger Question

The most interesting part of this theory isn’t whether Harry is intentionally stealing attention. I mean, come on. Where is the evidence suggesting he strategically times his life around the other members?

The bigger question is why we (okay fine, me) feel protective over who gets space in the spotlight.

Personally, I love an underdog, plus Harry dropping a single on Louis’ album release day really left a bad taste in my mouth. Like of all the days, dude??? Let him have his moment.

Subscribe now

So… Is Harry Stealing Their Thunder?

I’ll be 100% honest, probably not. Does it sometimes look like he is? Absolutely.

The overlap is real enough to notice, and I know I’m not the only one on this train.

So even though Harry Styles may live in a media ecosystem where even doing nothing can become news, when you’re connected to one of the most beloved and overanalyzed boybands in modern pop culture, and have a spare couple of hours on your hands, you’re going to use your journalism skills to look into it, aren’t you?

It was the version of events we were being asked to believe.

According to a source cited by The Sun, the pair’s disagreement escalated when Zayn allegedly made a remark about Louis’ late mother, Johannah Deakin, who passed in 2016.

It’s a claim that spread quickly and immediately raised questions. Not because tension between Zayn and Louis is unbelievable, their history quite literally suggests the opposite, but because this specific allegation feels both unusually severe and unusually convenient, and when something in pop culture feels too neatly explosive, it’s usually because it is.

So, since we are always staying sceptical and critical, for today’s deep dive, let’s break it down.

Subscribe now

The Source

We HAVE to examine the source first.

These claims originate from unnamed insiders, filtered through a tabloid with a long-standing reputation for sensational celebrity coverage. There is no corroboration, no direct quotes from the alleged fight, no timeline clarity beyond a vague reference to December.

Neither Zayn nor Louis, both of whom have given multiple interviews in recent months, have addressed the claim.

So what we’re left with is not a confirmed event, but a second-hand account of one, and that is exactly where pop culture narratives begin to blur into storytelling.

However, that doesn’t mean nothing happened.

In fact, it would be rather naive of us smarty pants thinkers to assume that Zayn and Louis, whose relationship has been publicly complicated for over a decade, wouldn’t clash at some point.

Their 2015 fallout following Zayn’s abrupt departure from One Direction was well-documented, including a tense exchange on social media and years of distance that followed. As recently as 2022, Louis admitted they weren’t in contact, telling The Zach Sang Show he wasn’t sure he was “mature enough” to move past the frustration he still felt.

This is not a friendship defined by ease, and that’s why the narrative isn’t exactly hard to believe… except that us fangirls know it very much is.

While we don’t have direct access to these relationships, there is over a decade of documented interaction to draw from, including Zayn’s familiarity with Louis’ family during their early years in the band - and the fact that news outlets have underestimated just how parasocial the 1D fandom is.

Johannah’s death in 2016 was a moment that extended far beyond Louis himself. It was public, deeply personal, and embedded in the wider history of the band.

Despite their ongoing feud at the time, Louis later confirmed that he and Zayn had spoken multiple times following her passing. Zayn had also reportedly promised to support Louis during his debut solo performance of Just Hold On on The X Factor UK final, a commitment he ultimately didn’t fulfil, adding further strain to an already fragile relationship.

That absence mattered, but it doesn’t disregard the contact they did have in the immediate aftermath, nor does it suggest a lack of awareness around the scale of Louis’ loss, which is why the idea that Zayn would later weaponise that grief in an argument feels inconsistent with what has previously been documented.

Subscribe now

The Timeline

Then, of course, there is the timeline.

If the alleged incident took place in December, Louis’ public behaviour in the months that followed doesn’t quite align with a relationship-ending fallout, particularly one involving such a personal remark.

Louis has notoriously been someone who speaks his mind and is fiercly protective of his family, so if Zayn really did say something about his mum, there would likely be no redemption, and definitely none of what we’re about to discuss.

In January, during an interview with Zach Sang, Louis reacted warmly to a Zayn reference, laughing when shown a bobblehead of his former bandmate.

In March, he appeared on BBC Radio 1 and spoke positively about the rumoured docuseries, careful not to reveal too much but notably upbeat about the project and his working relationship with Zayn.

Only after the story broke did the social media shift come: Louis and members of his family unfollowed Zayn.

If the fallout had truly occurred months earlier, why the delay in that reaction? Why the positive press cycle in between?

Either the timeline is inaccurate, or the narrative is incomplete.

Which brings us to the theories.

The Theories

Theory one: narrative management

There is speculation that the reported conflict is part of a broader narrative arc. The theory is that it’s designed to generate intrigue around a docuseries that may not be cancelled at all, but instead structured around tension and reconciliation.

The ambiguity surrounding the project, combined with director Nicola Marsh’s sharing The Sun’s article on her Instagram story, along with the caption: “There goes the last year of work”, and just hours later, confusingly shared a pic of Zayn behind the scenes, only adds fuel to that possibility.

Theory two: strategic PR

The timing of the report, landing just as Zayn released his new album, KONNAKOL, raises questions about who benefits from the story circulating now, like seriously, who? Whether intentional or not, controversy drives attention, and attention drives engagement. In a digital ecosystem where visibility is currency, even negative narratives can serve a purpose.

An example of this is when Justin Bieber released his first solo project, SWAG, last July, stories immediately began circulating that he and Hailey Bieber had split. Fans quickly began streaming and dissecting every track on the album, while Hailey took care of media interviews.

Despite the “bad press”, it no doubt contributed to the career-breaking streams the album experienced, including all 21 tracks simultaneously charting and considering Zayn has done very little promo for his album, perhaps he’s using the same strategy.

Theory three: a real fallout, but misrepresented

The most likely explanation is also the least dramatic: that something did in fact happen between Zayn and Louis, but the details have been exaggerated, distorted, or selectively reported (shocker).

What may have been a simple disagreement has now become an “altercation”, and a comment has become the headline.

Ultimately, the question isn’t whether Zayn and Louis argued, but actually if we’re being told the truth about how and why.

Right now, the version of events being presented relies heavily on anonymity, emotional provocation, and gaps in verifiable detail, making it less a confirmed narrative and more a compelling, sensationalised one.

Either way, I’ll leave you with these wise words from Zayn: