My One Direction obsession has been revived. Thanks to Milanote for sponsoring this video! Sign up for free and start you next creative project: milanote.com/shanspeare0924
I would love to see what you would find for Zarry (💛💚) and Zarries. This is another rabbit hole I would love for you to fall in. Loved the video. I now have to watch more of them.
I was literally watching this last thing on Wednesday night (including that part). Slept for 3 hours, woke up to see a BTS boy getting out of military, and waiting, at 3 AM, i saw the news, as a TH-cam video's name. 🧍🏻 The gasp I gusped!
Harry Styles has had larries speculating on his sexuality for years and then now I see the avg internet user claim he’s “queer baiting.” Like imagine being told constantly you’re gay and then you’re fake gay. It grosses me tf out.
@@Tieflingbardtrash me too and I honestly think that’s why even though he sings about queerness he hasn’t and won’t formally come out. Other people owning that for him can’t have been fun. I get wanting it to be his, and only his.
@@wesmoran5215 yes precisely. Absolutely no one is entitled to anyones sexuality and tbh, I think a lot of the discourse around individuals queer baiting just reinforces binary ideas ab gender and queerness. It’s so regressive.
I feel so bad for Freddie. Imagine hundreds if not thousands of people basically wishing you were never born. The same people then picked apart your appearance to conclude that you are not your father’s kid. Also they will continue to tell you that you are not your father’s kid. I hope Freddie doesn’t get harassed by Larries as he grows into an adult, but I know he probably will. :(
This is the worse thing that larries have done, try and destroy a child's life before he even has a concept of who he is. The internet is forever. I hope larries get their karma or at least feel deeply guilty for the harm they caused this minor by spreading absolute lies about his life since he was born.
Right. At first, it was just an annoying conspiracy imo, but ever since it was known that louis was going to be a father it became boderline disturbing and even dangerous.
not gonna lie, I clicked on this video assuming that Larry was a person and when you started talking about one direction, I further assumed he was a member of the band. I've learned a lot today
it’s so funny because on the other hand, lesbians and sapphic relationships have always struggled to be validated in the public’s eye because too many people will claim sapphic tendencies are just female friends being affectionate lol
And the fact that it's actually males fault that it's like that. Women are able to get affection through their friendships but men only get it with their partners. Which is why it's hard for them to be friends
@@Simmerdownidc I get that this is the patriarchy as a structure causing this, but it does really suck that when individual men and boys try to develop close, affectionate friendships with each other, it gets scrutinized and essentially shouted down by people claiming that they must be romantically/sexually interested in each other. I find it to kind of parallel my experiences trying to have and maintain close friendships with boys when I was an adolescent (speaking as a woman), and it felt demoralizing.
@@burnt-croissantsme and my girlfriend holding hands, kissing, saying I love you in public to then be asked if we wanna split the check or if we are sisters
it's not pedophelia though, pedophelia means attraction to prepuberscent children (so everything before your teenage years). So yes, she is right, it's not pedophelia. The internet is just using this word too often without knowing what it means
theyre so batshit insane they use that as proof that he's not his kid - they look TOO similar so they must be photoshopping baby louis's face onto freddie. like there's no reasoning with these people.
there seems to be a lot of bi erasure going on here around the beard discourse. do the larries not realize that these guys could have had a secretly genuine crush on each other (aka something deeper than a man crush or bromance) and still feel genuine attraction for women? it is already a weird to try to out people who have openly and fervently denied the secret relationship allegations or the sexuality speculation, but it’s also weird to pretend like these guys can only be straight or closeted gay men, and no one considers the possibility of bisexuality, kinda proving why so many bi men stay closeted. if the thought of a bi harry styles is that unthinkable no wonder he identifies as unlabeled now. btw you’re amazing shanspeare ❤ i love your work as usual
this! as a person who was 12/13 when all this started, I fell down the Larry rabbit hole pretty quickly and was honestly obsessed, but as the time passed and I figured my own sexuality (I’m bi) I started to feel really weird about everything. I often participated in group discussions about Larry and 98% of the time I was the only person saying “maybe they’re bi”. It felt awful. Then I just quit the fandom completely.
This is just more conspiracy speculation on the sexuality of men you don't know. - It doesn't matter if you say Bi instead of Gay, this conspiracism isn't made any better. - It cannot be Bi Erasure, as nobody identifying as bisexual is being erased. - If a person doesn't identify with any labels, that is OK. It means nothing.
honestly... shipping real people is just so creepy it can straight up ruin friendships, and i know i'd be so uncomfortable knowing fans are examining each and every move of mine when i decided to be anywhere near a close friend or coworker
I mean those things happens because of unhinged fans (and tabloids) and unhinged fans (and tabloids) are unhinged regardless of RPF. RPF by itself is fine and has a long and mostly chill tradition.
@@drawingsticks5333 knowing people see every interaction you have with a friend as sexual or romantic is uncomfortable. They're not dolls. They're humans.
it's all in what people do with shipping, and enjoying an idea doesn't hurt anyone unless you go somewhere that does. people always frame it like, how would you feel if someone wrote a story about you and someone romantically? personally, an aquaintance sent me a story she wrote that involved us hooking up in a sculpture garden, using my (first) name. it was a well-written story and i enjoyed it. it's not like she was profiting off it or using it to harrass me or anything, so why should i mind? unfortunately, when you have a large enough community of people, someone tends to take it too far or behave inappropriately, and that's the case with larry, but that's not a feature of RPF as a whole. big name writers make money off RPF all the time, and because they're respected and generally men, no one minds. when young queer women do it, they're mocked and villainized. life is, as usual, more complex than that. and i do personally think it's kinda weird that there's a professional play that the playwright profits off of about him marrying a real (straight) professional tennis player (but i don't think it would be weird if he published the same thing anonymously on ao3). i keep getting ads for one about hilary clinton having an affair with a chinese businessman.
If someone asked me if Dan and Phil are married or together i would not be able to reply, because - I MEANNN THE STUFF DAN'S SAID but also their privacy and just
@@kari7966 “basically they’ve alluded to the idea that they probably would if Dan didn’t have intense commitment issues but they share a mortgage sooo idk lol”
I can totally see a bunch of teenage boys thinking it's absolutely hilarious that two of their mates are being accused of being in a relationship and going along with it for only that reason 😅
I was a Larry in like 2013, not seriously I just watched some compilations and read some fanfics. A year or two ago I had my husband watch one of those Larry cute moments videos for fun and he was just like “that’s just teenage boys hanging out and having fun, it’s definitely not that deep.” Honestly I probably just didn’t spend enough time with boys when I was into Larry to realize that for myself.
@cassiea13245678 yeah sucks because we all say we want men to be more open but as soon as they do it's feminized or sexualized... im sick of it here lol
@@cassiea13245678 I agree that all the boys grabbing each other on stage and being affectionate with each other was nothing but with Harry and Louis it was different. Louis goes to possibly kiss Harry in Wellington and Harry has to twirl Louis around and tell him “we’re in public”. The interview where Harry tries to discreetly caress Louis’ arm while Louis tries to discreetly move his arm back so Harry can reach. The interview where Louis blows Harry a kiss and Harry then caresses Louis face and then notices the camera guy filming them and Louis makes an oops expression.
@@threeangels9318 You do a whole lot of projection here stating your reading of the situation as a fact when all of this is just a speculation. You have no idea what they said to each other, what they thought in any of this moments or what was the intentions behind their moves.
I went to college (UK vocational college so I was 16) with a girl who was a very gentle and sweet Larry shipper. She had a handmade sign that she'd take to each concert that read "Its okay to be gay, we all still love you" And she always said that even if she was wrong, she hoped it helped closeted gay people watching. I always think of her when 1D comes up, even though its 8 years since I've last seen her!
The picking away of Brianna's pregnancy pisses me off so much. It reminds me of when my cousin had her first child. She didn't show practically until she was five months in and became quite big very quickly. Pregnant bodies work differently depending on the person. These people are nuts in every way, and I personally saw that already when I was in the fandom. Though my input being a mixer as well might have influenced my thoughts, as I was seeing live how hardcore directioners treated the boys' girlfriends.
I took a Child Development class in my freshman year of High School. There’s actually a condition where a pregnant woman won’t show at all until later in her pregnancy. Your aunt, and seemingly Brianna as well, are examples of that. More people should be aware that pregnancy is not always a linear development, its like a stock market graph, sometimes its fast and other times its slow (hopefully pregnancy is never decreasing, though. That’d be bad.)
Are you aware that multiple of her pregnancy pictures were actually taken from other pregnant ladies pages? Like there’s actual solid proof of this? I can’t lie I do find that awfully strange
As a lesbian who knows almost nothing about one direction, this is the only way I'd want to learn more. Ah, the beauty of research. Thanks for the delicious content, Shansphere.
Also a lesbian, I never understood boy bands but I got sooo much Larry content through Tumblr because I was Invested™️ in media, not real people, shipping so some people I followed were very into Larry.
same. i didn't even know all the members' names and probably only heard one of their songs before but Shanspeare had me locked in for the conspiracies.
also lesbian. clicked on this video thinking “Larry Tomlinson” was a cute way to say harry styles without directly mentioning harry styles (idk why- algorithms?). I didn’t know there was a Louie but you bet I was glued to the screen for the whole 2 hrs lol
I would always feel super sorry for any woman who got into a relationship with a man who has a wide young female fanbase behind them, because the level of misogyny she'll be facing will be astronomical
Taylor Russell is either insanely brave, or she just doesn't give a fuck. She dated Harry and there were rumours she had a fling with Timothee Chalamet.
what’s crazy is they’re grown ass adults now and have no obligations or quote unquote “contracts” to keep their relationship a secret yet they still aren’t together so what are they even rooting for💀
Also, this ain't America in Europe you cannot contract people to not date, not come out etc. It's null because it interferes with personal rights too much
Yes they are now adults but we don’t know for how many years the NDAs they signed are supposed to run for. They might have been silenced to never address the rumours about their « supposed » relationship. Guys remember some NDAs can be valid for 50+ years
I think it's kinda sad that two cishet presenting guys can't just be sweet with each other without people "suspecting things". Like, this is the exact reason why men behave so weirdly towards each other, for fear of this kind of thing. It feels oddly regressive.
And the shippers then came up with the whole "The management is forcing them to pretend to be straight!"...... instead of thinking of how this whole thing might've affected their relationship in public. I remember these two youtubers (friends of Dan and Phil) who stopped hanging out together because of the aggressive shipping by their fandoms. At one point it stops you from being genuine in a video and that ruins everything. I remember once meeting these 3 teens (one girl and two boys) from my old highschool (I'd graduated the year before) and one of the boys confessed to me that she shipped them.... her friends.... It made them very uncomfortable and she would not stop.
@@Carolina57685Shippers will bend over backwards forwards and sideways to make everything apply to their own narrative. If you don't want to be shipped that means you're queer baiting/leading the fans on and it's not their fault they can't stop themselves. If you are okay with it that automatically consents for your fans to do anything they want
(I don't think you were intending on this nor believe your comment suggested this idea I just like to talk) A lot of manosphere guys (especially in the twenty tens) would use the idea that straight men not being able to be friends is exclusive to men and therefore the fault of women. It happens a lot when men and women are friends to the point where it's normalized and does occasionally (especially in recent years) happen when women have female friends
i was just thinking the same thing. all of these affectionate behaviors are normal for teen girls, but when any boy or man is affectionate with others it is seen as romantic/sexual
@KC-2049I do understand that but I think it gets a bit complex when you do see these male companionships that do seem like they’re taking our experiences and painting it as platonic, I just feel gaslit sometimes? Like I’m all for men being more open with their emotions and being able to have more affectionate friendships but I don’t think most in media understand how to do that without just like making them seem like two guys that are really into each other but no you’re wrong they’re just friends obviously!
I'm so glad you're making a video about this! I HATE shipping of celebrities. Ship the fake characters all you want, but when we ship celebrities we continue to subject them to the "paper doll and Barbie" treatment. They're real people, with real feelings, very real platonic relationships with the people they're being shipped with.
I don’t believe they were together, and possibly still are, because I thought ‘oh they’d look cute together’, I’m going to ship them. I watched interviews, concerts, video taken by fans (such as Wellington) and thought ‘I bet they’re a couple’.
I remember this as well as the people shipping Camila Cabello and Lauren Jauregi from 5th harmony. In the case of the latter, Lauren later came out to say that the online speculation made her journey in embracing her queer identity difficult and damaged her friendships with the other girls. She started to question her own behaviour toward the others after seeing discourse over-analyzing interactions. It played into stereotypes of queer women being "predatory" and she felt the need to delay her coming out. Speculation like this has tangible real life harms, especially to those who actually are queer, like Lauren and Harry
this was also the case with dan and phil. i genuinely feel like everyone who speculates on real people's sexualities and relationships needs to watch dan's coming out video because it is so insightful. at one point he described the speculation and shipping as feeling like "[he] was back at school again, surrounded by threatening people trying to expose [him] for their entertainment."
1:42:57 imagine growing up and reading online that people wish you wouldn't exist. Strangers on the internet have constantly hated your existence ever since your conception, to your birth and even your current existence. Terrifying, honestly. I feel bad for that Freddie baby
@@roseyoung44 so his ex has said that he has a bunch of 1D fans added on snap that he’s been talking to for years (implied that it wasn’t just talking though) and that he’s been harassing her and trying to contact her post breakup
@@roseyoung44 he openly preys on young female fans. tons of evidence. his ex maya henry wrote a book about his abuse (like harassment and physical attacks) that only recently started getting attention because she started recently getting mobbed online for talking about their relationship. After she spoke out about the fan harassment on tiktok and how she shouldn't be attacked for talking about her experience in an abusive relationship, there were tons of other fellow women who started coming out and corroborating her story with their own.
received the shock of a lifetime last year when i logged into a tumblr acct i hadn't used for 5+ years to see one of my mutuals STILL posting from the larry stylinson trenches
i was today years old when i learned that theres no one direction member named larry, the ship was just so big back in the day that i thought this larry stylinson guy was a member of the band
It’s wild to me that the Larry fans never considered either of them also were just genuinely attracted to women? There are a lot of sexualities that are attracted to multiple genders, and while a lot of the terms are more common nowadays bisexual was definitely in use - 2010 was either right during or right after the bi emo/scene boy culture moment and they referenced Freddie Mercury who identified as bisexual. Bi (and pan and other sexualities) erasure is a hell of a thing
Every erasure of reality's boundaries really illustrates that Harry/Louis, Taylor/Karlie, Camila/Lauren etc are with the lens of celebrities as fictional characters rather than multi-layered, imperfect humans who don't live their lives for fan fiction stories.
That’s the best way to maintain their belief in Louis and Harry’s long-term relationship, if you think about it. Every girlfriend in their lives is a threat to this belief, but if they both are gay, then there’s absolutely no way they actually date women. Same logic applies to their insistence that Freddie is the son of his grandmother and her husband, instead of saying that he’s the child of Briana but not from Louis. Because if Briana was never pregnant, then the resemblance with Louis is not a threat to their conspiracy as the whole pregnancy was fake to begin with
as someone who was a huge larrie when i was like 14, this video was so interesting. i didn't even know half of this lore because i left the fandom in 2015 before the band even went on hiatus. it feels almost crazy that people kept believing in larry even in 2024. obsessing so much about real people's private lives is absolutely unhinged. i can excuse it on tweens but you can't be like that as a full grown adult
So strange how you and Mila Tequila both uploaded long retrospectives on One Direction days before Liam’s death. I wasn’t even a fan but I’m in shock about it. Way too soon.
i appreciate the silly comic relief of the rbb saga before getting hit with the absolute dumpster fire of people speculating on a pregnant woman’s body and an actual kid’s family.
RBB truly had me on edge back in the day. Things started to feel invasive and uncomfortable after babygate, and as an adult looking back at this whole timeline it makes me sorry and sad for Louis and Harry. I look back at those early videos and I see that what they had was a close friendship, but who among us hasn’t had an innocent crush on a friend? It just makes me think that people that young shouldn’t be as famous as they were. We all deserve to have privacy in our lives as we figure out how to be people with relationships and friendships.
Yeah, and if they were young and questioning, then shining a billion spotlights on them was not only an awful thing to do, but also pretty unproductive in terms of allowing them to figure out if they actually wanted anything from each other.
I think another reason why Harry Styles and Taylor Swift's relationship was so scrutinized is because two large shipping fandoms we're overlapped, on one hand it was the people who thought Harry was gay and Taylor was his beard and on the other hand there are the Gaylors, Taylor Swift fans who think Taylor is gay and was presumably dating Diana Agron from Glee at the time, or starting to date Karlie Kloss. Loving this video so far and would love a deep dive into Gaylor, Swiftgron and Kaylor because I think the shippers were (and still are for some of them) just as unhinged and parasocial as the Larries
right, there's also the directioners that hated the idea of larry being a thing, and of harry having a girlfriend, so they dragged taylor to the ground, I mean "slut" is about that lol
maybe it was gaylors, but could it not also have been the misogyny taylor faced at the time for being a woman that dated a lot that caused the scrutiny? like I can imagine that in the eyes of the general public, its kinda sus of taylor to start dating the most popular member of a very new and recently popular boy band
aaah, i remember being 15ish and watching larry compilations, reading fanfics, theorizing in facebook groups, reading updated lore... there is so much to unpack, as i was a part of the fandom for years, there are flashbacks coming to me lmao i honestly had forgotten all about it because i moved fandoms. as the years passed, i started to question everything and now i'm at a point where i realized a lot was just a coincidence that we gave more importance that it needed because we wanted to believe SO bad that it was real. not gonna lie, it was so much fun, but now that i'm an adult i realize it's just that i love fandom spaces and that one thing is thinking two people have great chemistry and look cute together and the other thing is whatever larries have going on. i'm glad i grew up and accepted the fact that i was being crazy. now, i just feel sorry about it all. i find it incredibly sad that louis and harry's friendship was affected by this crazy behaviour. it is insane to me that there's still adults believing in these sorts of things, like, there comes a time when you realize that even if they had something going on it was none of our business at all and people meddling in made it worse :/ like we can't stop people from shipping, but if you're going to do that at least have the decency to do so in places where the real people aren't going to see it, you know? god. to me, the worst thing was louis son being in the middle of it all, like that poor babyboy had nothing to do with this mess and people were calling him fake (i admit that when it was first confirmed i didn't believe it but then i saw his face and was like... that's a tiny louis!) i think a lot of us were just way too deep into the conspiracy and felt good about "knowing the truth" that we didn't want to think of other possibilities because the thought of this crafted romance was way too "amazing" to be destroyed. i remember specifically reading a comment that said something along of "if larry isn't true, then it was the most beautiful romance ever created" which sums it up pretty well on how we felt back then
i once accidentally came across a Larry Twitter account, and i found that she literally has a whole family 😭 like girl instead of fighting in Louis comments about Larry how about focus on your child at home omg
@@kupotenshi omg, ive seen those on tumblr 💀💀 honestly im nearly 14 and yet i STILL have more sense than those goofy people, that should be a wake up call atp
@@arbitarious mostly because both burnout of the genre plus some really bad films back to back, superheroes are still pretty respected in the form of tv and comic books however
Yes. Very much this. I do think it's okay to do in a light hearted manner if the celebrities involved specify that it is okay. Anything outside of that feels like a massive breach of privacy. We've seen multiple times how it can damage friendships and force actually queer people deeper into the closet
@@legendswarble2845 I honestly don't really pay attention to celebrities outside of the media that they're in. Like I see them as "off the clock" and basically don't interact. But that's just a me thing, I do get people being into that culture.
@Desi-Designs Agree. It's not my thing really. I'm an actor so it's a little too real for me to get into as a fan. I know how uncomfortable I would be if it was me. But, if the folks involved aren't uncomfortable I don't have a moral issue with it, especially if they think it's fun. I know that happens some times.
Honestly though for most Larries (or at least some) it’s not about shipping. First and foremost we want Harry and Louis (and all the boys) to be happy regardless if whether they’re together or not. But with all the evidence it’s also hard to then think they most definitely are not together.
isnt it his third cancellation since the band broke up or smth? what can he even be cancelled from anymore it’s not like he’s putting out music or doing anything substantial 💀
@@merlumili turns out he was really abusive to his ex maya henry, would talk shit about the other members then go to their concerts so that would be in the news rather than his shit personality
Being a Larry truther in 2012 was really fun until my brain developed past being a preteen, and I realized we were really weird for that Edit: imagine Freddy getting older and googling his own name 🥴
no frrr i thought i was so cool and smart for being a larry truther in 2012 and then i got a bit older and i was like damn i was legit insane back then ok
@@grandempressvicky6387when you said "meme" i thought you meant like a silly comic, not someone actually blaming the mold in their house for being a larry truther in a tweet 😭
@KC-2049 i remember that frerard conspiracies were a BIG thing back in the day, plus petekey/peterick and even ryden 😭 they still are a thing but more in a joke way nowadays lol
That Reddit threat around 55:00 is so gross. That one person saying "I would need a non-larry explanation for every proof" - how did you not mature AT ALL in the intervening years and still believe these people owe you anything at all? How about you finally take these two *human beings* at their word? FFS
Like I have great compassion for queer teenagers who were desperately hanging on to the idea of gay idols (even though it wasn't okay then, either). But these are grown women now and they HAVE to know better.
I can't believe there was a fake baby conspiracy in both the Larry and Gaylor fandoms. And I also can't believe I've watched hours of video content about these fandoms when I have never been involved in either. Also like, in regards to the pregnancy speculation. Aside from it just being generally gross to hyperfixate on a person's body and how it's changing, fixating on a pregnant person in particular feels outright cruel. I can't imagine being put through that during such a vulnerable time, especially in the early months when the risk of pregnancy loss is much higher. Plus, anytime the "fake pregnancy" conspiracy is thrown around when someone isn't "showing" to the degree the public thinks is acceptable, it just makes me tilt my head. I've known so many people who didn't start showing (especially on the first pregnancy) until like five or six months in. Everyone's body is different, so why are we placing weird as fuck expectations on pregnant people? Sorry, that got me heated.
I met a woman once who was fully nine months pregnant and you never would have guessed she was pregnant at all, even in a fitted t shirt, and it's so misogynistic to go after the woman in these situations, and yeah, maybe never say anything about anyone's body, ever, and she doesn't owe you anything about her body and baby. You're right to be heated. It's awful.
I cannot verbally explain the sheer anger and audacity I felt at 54:00. These people are absolutely delusional. They look at something that was directed at them and choose to ignore it. I've said this once but I'll just keep saying it; Larries are the q anons of celebrity shipping. Seriously. These people need help.
People saying a child shouldn't exist tells me this person should be in intense therapy. This is not someone I want possibly being my colleague or cousin.
The irony is that the "evil management" that these Larry people seem to think were/are closeting Harry and Louis, probably told them in the beginning to play up the bromance since it was popular, they also obviously thought it was light-hearted and funny at the start. Then it had to be forcibly shut down because of the deranged harassment. I've never understood shipping real people and I'll never agree with it. Those are REAL people, with feelings and lives that have nothing to do with those shipping them. Even if the relationship is real or not. Shipping real people is, in my opinion, borderline stalking behavior and often crosses the line into s*xual harassment. I appreciate that these corners of fandom may offer a place for people to cope with their own personal issues, but I would argue that it is an unhealthy coping mechanism and should be treated as such. Also, if it were true that Harry and Louis were dating, then these "Larrys" were actively trying to out them and that's never okay. I really liked Harry's quote at the end. It's criminal how artful, well researched, and beautifully presented each of Shanspeare's videos are and that this channel doesn't have millions of subscribers yet. Mostly commenting just to boost the channel. Never heard of this Larry Stylinson before, a little too old for One Direction, but I feel aptly educated and like I need a few showers to wash away the ick factor from this sordid bit of recent history. Keep up the amazing work.
Edit (RIP I CRIED I'M SORRY IDK WHAT TO SAY I JUST FOUND OUT) 10-16-24🖤 Perfect timing😂 Liam is being silly online again and it made me miss this crazy time Not being silly.... being a menace to society
these past few days, I've been getting a lot of video essays about 1D. It feels surreal to wake up yesterday with such tragic news. I've been going back to the boys' music and overall just reminiscing about that era of my life as a tween going into teenhood. Now as an adult, hearing Liam's passing, broke me and made me realize how much impact they had in my life.
Fantastic video. I was never a directioner, but I stumbled upon the Larry conspiracy a few years ago and occasionally check back in with a few blogs out of morbid fascination. The one point I would add is that while sure, the fandom provides a safe space for queer larries to explore their own identities and challenge heteronormative narratives, they also reinforce a lot of misogynistic ones. Obligatory #notalllarries, but a lot of them relentlessly attack the women in the men’s lives, not just “beards” but female coworkers, friends, and family members, meanwhile platonic male counterparts only get a fraction of the ire. There’s this prevalent narrative that women can’t accomplish anything for themselves nor do they want to, they just want to attach themselves to an innocent rich and famous man in order to leech off his success. Harry Styles’ most recent girlfriend, Taylor Russel, is an actress who had decent career before dating him but larries insisted all her movies were awful and no one had ever heard of her before she started “bearding” for him. His sister recently put out a book where she discussed her own mental health struggles and referenced the forced outing of other celebrities as a bad thing, so the larries attacked her for “playing the victim” because “no one would ever read her book except Harry Styles fans so she should be grateful they pay her any attention.” At least one blog with a sizable following has recently gone so far as to say that most sexual misconduct allegations against male celebrities are made by “attention-seeking gold-diggers” who were either jilted by rejection from a famous person or eager to take money from “evil management” as a closeting maneuver. But if anyone tries to criticize them for being misogynistic, they pull out “how dare you accuse me, a queer woman, of being a misogynist?” With all that, I reiterate your point of asking how safe a space can be if it has to bulldoze other people’s spaces?
theres a lot of misogyny in fandom despite how much of it is built by and for women and girls. i think a lot of it has to do with that "not like other girls" attitude that develops from the ire stereotypically feminine interests draw from the wider culture, causing these girls to feel the need to justify their behavior as somehow different or better than that of their non-fandom peers. it's present not just in the larry fandom, but in fandom culture at large-just look at the way fandoms treat female characters that "get in the way" of gay ships. attempts to criticize this behavior are then shut down in the same way as you described, and overall it creates this environment where youre never encouraged to reflect on how your behavior impacts others and the only legitimate response to being asked to self-reflect is to double down, because all criticism is lumped into the same category regardless of its validity. though that could be said of a lot of online bubbles, i suppose. idk. it's kinda sad to me.
I totally agree. Queer women can still do/say mysoginistic and homophobic things. Even if there are many of them who all agree that they're right and everyone else is homophobic and sexist. But that doesn't change the truth. Just makes it really difficult for others to interact with them when it comes to their shipping. As a queer woman I've had enough of people from different fandoms calling me a homophobe for saying that I don't think it's appropriate to use a sexuality label for someone who clearly does not label themselves in any way and does not even talk about their romantic interests/partners in any way. Even though I've said it in different fandoms, about different people, the obsessive shippers always have the same "you're just homophobic" reply. You just can't win.
@@triangleman2627oh yeah belittling female characters in favor of male ones is a huge issue across all fandom, and I’m glad you mention the specific hatred of the characters whose only crime is “getting in the way” of the gay ships. Larries and other real life shipping conspiracies take the worst of broader fandom toxicity and make it all that much worse by applying it all to real human beings. So when it comes to “beards”, they aren’t just characters “getting in the way” of a ship, they’re evil homophobic monsters out to get the sweet innocent gay babies so harassing them is praxis actually /s. The “not like other girls” this is also a good point to bring up, as larries and other shipping conspiracy theorists often frame themselves as a superior class of fan as opposed to the straight (derogatory) casuals who “believe everything they’re told.” More specifically, I’ve seen a lot of them fantasize about how much Tomlinson and Styles love the work of “real” fans who pick up on their “signals” meanwhile being ashamed of all the others the evil management wants them to cater too.
@@Tessa_GrThis, and it happens outside of fandom too. I’m also queer, but one time some people made the assumption I fell under a different specific label than what I am behind my back, and they went around telling people I was this other thing for a long time before I heard what they were doing. Once I finally did and explained what I actually am, they got mad at me for “lying” to them or otherwise being deliberately misleading. To this day I have no idea what exactly I did to “mislead” them, but now I’m super sensitive about labels in general (which is part of why I’m not being specific) and am especially uncomfortable with people speculating on the sexualities of other people. People like the larries argue that it helps support LGBTQIA’s+ acceptance in general to speculate about famous people, but does it really? If someone famous was actually in the closet for whatever reason, would people scrutinizing their every action really create a supportive environment to come out to?
@@aconstantstateofbladerunne5251Sadly, weird label-enforcing has distanced me and several queer friends of mine from the community. And there is a huge sexism problem even amongst WLW, but we're apparently not ready for that conversation. 🤷♀️
I’m stressed out of my skull prepping for Hurricane Milton and this is the sweet, sweet immersive distraction that I desperately needed. Shanspeare, you made my day with this!
Im watching this video on a fandom i was never in and realizing this happens in a lot of fandoms. Would kill to watch a video like this on My Chem lore cuz it goes so deep
man watching this as a former larry is crazy, after liams death ive found myself coming back to one direction content, rediscovering names events and moments. It also brought me back to larry. I had long forgotten my belief of them being together since i left the fandom. I was a quarantine fan so at an impressionable age of 13 was when i found them and managed to catch upto events from 10 years past in an impressive amount of time! I also believed them to be together until 2020, from analysing the similarity in their lyrics to their solo career lyrics. But, soon it became adamantly clear that their lives werent exactly intertwined post the hiatus. All this blabbering and i fail to make my point clear, basically what i mean to say is that this is an incredibly well constructed video and the explanations are probable enough. However, i do believe during band years something was there that maybe ended in a bitter breakup. After watching so many candid clips, of not only interviews but from when they didnt know they were on the clock, to fans unfortunately breaching their privacy and recording them from afar. It wouldnt be wrong to say that something did happen. While your analysations of the harm of conspiracy theories holds very much true! It's just nothing more than two boys infatuated with one another. This is not the first time this has happened. Older queer people have opened up about how and what circumstances they were pushed to portray a narrative and how extreme management companies can be. Anyway not trying to criticise you or anything! Just saying its incredible that such a simple fact(maybe not fact but you get it) got so out of hand. Anyway from a uhh quite?? or weak larrie?? whatever you said i just wanna say you handled the topic very well :)
LMAOO SAME-- 2020 to 2022 was prime Larry time for me haha. Fun while it lasted, but looking back a lot of the stuff was just creepy and disrespectful to the boys
Having been pregnant and had no baby at the end of it (full term stillbirth), hearing the way fans scrutinised that girl's pregnancy and accused her of faking it made me especially angry.
i love fandom deep dives so i clicked on this as soon as I saw it. The different types of larries and their motivations is rich enough to be the backdrop of a fantasy world's politics. much like how george r.r. martin based ASOIAF off the war of the roses, you could make an intricate political system in a fantasy world based on the different factions of larries. jokes aside your work is amazing, cinematic and full of nuance, as always
my favorite theory is that they might be bi or something like that and they were maybe into each other at some point but just... aren't a couple, they moved on, stuff that happens to anyone. I think inventing some weird conspiracy around it is weird, but I also like the idea of two teenagers falling in love because it's a cute idea. But they're not teenagers anymore and it stopped being cute long ago, I really don't like when people go overboard with shipping real people. Especially when we have no idea what happens behind the scenes. Also I never was a "larrie" I was literally 10 years old in 2012, I barely knew english and the only thing I cared for online was winx club lmao
as a teenage girl who got into the mcr rabbit hole about two years ago, i know a thing or two about real life shipping and parasociality, especially when it comes to frerard 😭 at heart most of the culture surrounding those ships is harmless but the line between harmless and creepy is very blurry. a shan video about irl shipping is everything i needed rn HAHAHA
I was on the Frerard bus back when it was super big (late 2000s) and oooof it got crazy. Not as bad as Brendon/Ryan from Panic but it was a mess. Shipping real people always ends up ugly and weird. Glad I grew out of that in high school 😂
My hot take on real person shipping is that video montages of cute/affectionate moments are harmless and fanfic is okay as long as it's posted to the appropriate sites, but that there has to be an understanding that it isn't real. Once you start doing body language analysis, trashing someone's real partner, publicly digging for evidence or bringing your ship up to the real people involved, you're crossing a line. It stops being fun.
I was literally just thinking what if they did have feelings for each other or maybe secretly were together when they were younger but decided to go different ways! I.e. what if they are bi!? None of the fans considered that two things can be true at once.
Yes, how disgusting to believe that 2 members of a boyband, both of them queer, feel in love but were strongly advised to hide their relationship. I mean it’s not like it’s happened before. There have never been closeted boyband members before, what are Larries even thinking?
Elder millenial here, was too jaded by the time One Direction got popular but I have only watched 1 minute and 19 seconds and you have me eager to learn anything and everything about whoever this Larry dude is. Absolutely LOVED this intro.
I was also watching this when I found out. Wow. I’m not a 1D girlie personally but watched mila tequila’s 1D video yesterday and this one just now. Super eerie. His poor son and family.
As a queer woman I kind of hate ppl using their own queerness to justify this. There are plenty of actual out queer people for us to support. We don’t need to bother people who either aren’t queer or don’t want to come out. And as with Johnlock, it’s mostly women fetishizing two men together.
That's how you know none of those women in larry fandom are queer or gay because they don't get inherently grossed out by how their fandom treats women and how heavily they rely on stereotypes to "clock" queer people.
@@kupotenshi yeah totally. It's toxic toward women, promotes bi erasure, and disregards the idea that two straight men can express sincere feelings of friendship. Larrys don't accept the possibility of platonic love, because apparently men having feelings is gay,
@@kupotenshiThis just blatantly denies the fact that queer women can still perpetuate misogyny and homophobia. Plenty of Larries are queer and were projecting their own feelings onto the two guys. There’s tons of comments under this video talking about how they as former Larries are queer themselves or figured out they were queer through participation in this subculture.
@@Maggie-vt8wp "plenty of larries are queer" citation needed. I was a "larry shipper" in 2014 before the word "larries" even existed. As a gay person, the story of oppression/closeting drew me in and I was sympathetic and wanted them to be free. The longer I was in there, the more I saw that the gfs were called "beards" as a way to hate/dismiss/mock them (bearding wasn't seen as a woman helping a gay man, like it is recognized throughout gay history) Yes, there were gay and queer women who found their way into the fandom because of a lie about queer oppression, but the MAJORITY of larries spreading theories today are not gay and perpetuate harm (biphobia, misogyny, conspiracy theorism) and it's actually really sad that young queer people got caught up in this toxic conspiracy theory.
@@kupotenshi “Citation needed”? Did you finish watching the video or did you just miss the discussion of queer Larries? You said that Larries are “not actually queer,” but that is entirely untrue as you can see from the many comments from former Larries who’ve talked about discovering their queerness through the shipping culture or projecting their own feelings onto Harry and Louis as proxies for their own inner turmoil. The study Shan mentions has a quote from a current Larry who is queer themselves. Queer women/people are not exempt from perpetuating misogyny and homophobia. I don’t disagree that it’s very sad that young queer people looking for support and community find themselves caught up in this conspiracy. That’s not what my comment was about.
The dehumanisation in all of this is kind of insane. Also the whole babygate is so misogynistic it was super gross to listen to. Also agree with how gross it is that men can't be close with each other without speculation. On top of that this is very amatonormative. Also there are real queer people who have actually faced closeting, I wish people would direct their energies towards these people. Also in the end queerness should be humanising, this is not it, these people clearly don't see their targets as human. They're essentially toys. I'm not even against shipping these too, if you want to do so go ahead. I'm all for creating queer stories but I'm very much against dehumanising people, even in the name of supposed queerness.
I feel like it's also weirdly anti queer, because if they're platonic friends, they're kind of queering platonic friendship, or at least not conforming to toxic ideas of masculinity, or avoiding being called queer for being close to other men. That friendship would be meaningfully progressive without anything gay going on, but they think there's no heterosexual explanation for men being close, which is not a progressive position.
Yeah and also it's very amatonormative i.e. any closeness and intimacy is assumed to be of romantic nature instead of just being allowed to exist. Especially when queerness is associated which completely misses that aroace people are also queer.
i think honestly it's not wrong to ship celebrities so long as you do so in private spaces. ao3, twitter, reddit, and tumblr are public spaces. performing this behavior in spaces where celebrities can see, especially talking to them about it, is harassment. the way people treat Chappell Roan and her response to it has me thinking that we really need to start considering that celebrities have a right to consent. like i've always been anti-RPF of anyone who is alive or recently deceased, or who does not consent to the RPF existing (and no, not talking about it is not consent), but the Chappell Roan situation has me even more :/ about it.
@@mikkosaarinen3225 People think my bestie and I are dating whenever we're hanging around, even though we're not really touchy, we just seem close. We are both bi, so they're not wrong about everything, but friends can be close. They should be! Friends are just as important as partners, maybe even more so. People get so silly about types of relationships, and it's sad. I went ice skating alone last year because everyone I asked had couple zoned it as an activity. Like it can only be a date, which is ridiculous. I think it's also partly the sexualization of anything queer, too. If it seems romantic at all, and it's gay, it MUST be sexual.
Dark Larrie using the word dark like dark matter is fucking killing meeeeeeeee I thought they were just "welcome to my twisted mind" about their shipping........
oh this video really gave me some big war flashbacks lmao. as someone who used to be a larrie (yea shame) im shocked that anyone can still believe the conspiracy past the age of 14. the main reason i stayed in the fandom back then was the community and friends i had made, as a closeted kid back then i felt safe, until i discovered fictional shipping and then i realized how insane being a larrie was. looking back as an adult i feel so bad that i contributed to the bad turn in their friendship. anyway great video as always
Anyone else around for the Benedict Cumberbatch "fake PR wife" and Babygate era too? So many of this sounds familiar. I believe there were far more older people in that conspiracy than Larry but the playbook is the same
directioners and swifties (as someone being both) are the craziest fandoms I've experienced. the fact that there's a large subgroup of the fandoms dedicated on a conspiracy theory about them being gay is astounding.
The glee fandom too! Back in the day there was a subgroup who thought lea michele and diana agron were secretly dating. I don't think they were very big though, I only found out because I was already following someone on tumblr who started posting about it.
@@ana-mariacomorasu2798 I'm not sure how that started, I don't know enough about taylor or why fans think she's gay. There were glee fans speculating about lea and diana way back in 2010 or 2011 and I don't think anyone questioned taylor's sexuality until years later, so I don't know if it's same people.
I am way too old to have been a Directioner (waves ancient and tattered Duranie flag) but I became fascinated by the Larry conspiracy through watching it unfold on Tumblr. This is the best, most level-headed analysis of the phenomenon I have ever seen. You thoroughly examine every aspect of who these people are, what they did and why they did it. You established that they took it too far while maintaining compassion and not being condescending toward them. Wonderful job. (I’d love to see you handle the LiveJournal-era phenomenon of “Mary Sue sporking” as well. That was another fascinating mob mentality, where people rose up en masse against other people’s fanfic.)
This was a fantastic video! When I was younger and joined the One Direction fandom, I thought it was almost "required" to become a Larry shipper as well. After watching all these videos of “proof,” I started believing in it, too-I mean, some of it definitely looked very convincing, and they were cute together. But after being in the fandom for a while and getting older, I realized that “Larries” probably did nothing but destroy a very genuine friendship between two young men. It’s so sad because they were (and probably still are) so convinced they were “fighting for them” and that they were the only ones who could “see the real them.” No matter if they ever dated or not, what Larry shippers did was invasive, creepy, and dehumanizing for so many people. I really hope Harry and Louis’s friendship, at least away from the public eye, wasn’t completely destroyed.
My One Direction obsession has been revived. Thanks to Milanote for sponsoring this video! Sign up for free and start you next creative project: milanote.com/shanspeare0924
welcome back to the fandom :D
I would love to see what you would find for Zarry (💛💚) and Zarries. This is another rabbit hole I would love for you to fall in.
Loved the video. I now have to watch more of them.
Please I BEG can you do a video on taekookers they are like the same as Larries and have be running rampant causing chaos on BTS for YEARS
@@dintdaymynanwI will never forgive them for what they did to Jennie lmao
holy fuck dude... I'm so sorry
"... and Liam, well, Liam, I hope he's doing well. Genuinely." This hits differently now.
I just heard the news and thought about this
This is like one of those Doge memes where he goes, “I hope nothing bad happens.”
I hope hes not i hope he rots in hell
Ugh truly. The sudden surge in 1D related videos on the app in the past week alone and the timing of everything that is going on, is insane...
I was literally watching this last thing on Wednesday night (including that part). Slept for 3 hours, woke up to see a BTS boy getting out of military, and waiting, at 3 AM, i saw the news, as a TH-cam video's name. 🧍🏻 The gasp I gusped!
babe put your clothes back on. shanspeare just dropped 2 hours of internet lore and we're watching it front to back
More like, “Babe, take your clothes off… “ lol
so real !! i love getting dressed up for shanspeare vids so i'm not underdressed and they're not overdressed. we are simply dressed B)
Babe, put you victorian garb on, it's Shanspear time!
I'd still do it sans clothes 😅
Me to my fiance 😂 we love shanspeare!!
Harry Styles has had larries speculating on his sexuality for years and then now I see the avg internet user claim he’s “queer baiting.” Like imagine being told constantly you’re gay and then you’re fake gay. It grosses me tf out.
@@Tieflingbardtrash me too and I honestly think that’s why even though he sings about queerness he hasn’t and won’t formally come out. Other people owning that for him can’t have been fun. I get wanting it to be his, and only his.
@@wesmoran5215 yes precisely. Absolutely no one is entitled to anyones sexuality and tbh, I think a lot of the discourse around individuals queer baiting just reinforces binary ideas ab gender and queerness. It’s so regressive.
He did come out though, just not in the way some people want him to (as in be very specific about his sexual orientation).
Half the internet thinks he's straight pretending to be queer and the other half thinks he's queer pretending to be straight 💀
@@linasayshush and he’s the one who knows which one, and it isn’t our business what he is.
I feel so bad for Freddie. Imagine hundreds if not thousands of people basically wishing you were never born. The same people then picked apart your appearance to conclude that you are not your father’s kid. Also they will continue to tell you that you are not your father’s kid. I hope Freddie doesn’t get harassed by Larries as he grows into an adult, but I know he probably will. :(
This is the worse thing that larries have done, try and destroy a child's life before he even has a concept of who he is. The internet is forever. I hope larries get their karma or at least feel deeply guilty for the harm they caused this minor by spreading absolute lies about his life since he was born.
Also, all of that aside, THE KID LOOKS EXACTLY LIKE LOUIS!
Right. At first, it was just an annoying conspiracy imo, but ever since it was known that louis was going to be a father it became boderline disturbing and even dangerous.
❤
not gonna lie, I clicked on this video assuming that Larry was a person and when you started talking about one direction, I further assumed he was a member of the band. I've learned a lot today
I saw the thumbnail and was like, "Is Harry Styles' real last name Stylinson? wow"
I knew in theory but I still kept forgetting larry wasn't a guy
Getting flashbacks to Jenny Nicholson's One Direction in The Purge video and her having no idea which member was Larry 💀
As an OG Directioner I keep forgetting that there are people who don't give a shit about 1D 😂
So real
I built this algorithm brick by brick
🥲
😂😂😂
🖤
Piece by piece. Snip by snip🎶🎶🎶🎶
Cue the art of the dress song by Rarity.
behaviour people call "fruity" in male relationships is stuff they wouldn't even blink at in female relationships.... wild
it’s so funny because on the other hand, lesbians and sapphic relationships have always struggled to be validated in the public’s eye because too many people will claim sapphic tendencies are just female friends being affectionate lol
And the fact that it's actually males fault that it's like that. Women are able to get affection through their friendships but men only get it with their partners. Which is why it's hard for them to be friends
@@Simmerdownidc I get that this is the patriarchy as a structure causing this, but it does really suck that when individual men and boys try to develop close, affectionate friendships with each other, it gets scrutinized and essentially shouted down by people claiming that they must be romantically/sexually interested in each other. I find it to kind of parallel my experiences trying to have and maintain close friendships with boys when I was an adolescent (speaking as a woman), and it felt demoralizing.
@@burnt-croissantsme and my girlfriend holding hands, kissing, saying I love you in public to then be asked if we wanna split the check or if we are sisters
@Simmerdownidc ...That its "males" fault?
“Omg they called me pedophile in the streets” Like girl you’re in your 30s dating a 17 yo…They’re right 😭! you’re not the victim here
Right???
If lady pulled in like, "Where have you been all my life?"
His answer would've been ,"In diapers" 😭
EXACTLY BRITNEY MANSON MOMENT-
it's not pedophelia though, pedophelia means attraction to prepuberscent children (so everything before your teenage years). So yes, she is right, it's not pedophelia. The internet is just using this word too often without knowing what it means
@@liste302literally shut up you troglodyte
what kills me about "babygate" is that freddy looks EXACTLY like Louis. like ive never seen a father son duo who looks so similar. its crazy.
literally!! some of these larries are absolutely crazy and delusional, like imagine if freddie didn't look like Louis?
yeah fr u cannot deny their similarities. also lucky (lottie’s son) looks a lot like freddy. the tomlinson genes r strong af
theyre so batshit insane they use that as proof that he's not his kid - they look TOO similar so they must be photoshopping baby louis's face onto freddie. like there's no reasoning with these people.
Louis is NOT the father of Freddie ...
He in fact looks like his real father so much it’s even scary. Without all the bad face edit and even worse photoshop he looks nothing like Louis…
At 14 I was like they're definitely gay.... years later turns out I was the gay one all along
this is the realest thing i’ve ever seen
Okay but this is what happened to me💀
i mean im gay but so is harry 😂😂😂 we were right about 1/5 of the members being queer
thats so real lmao
Samee, I started as a fujoshi and ended up, well, gay af
there seems to be a lot of bi erasure going on here around the beard discourse. do the larries not realize that these guys could have had a secretly genuine crush on each other (aka something deeper than a man crush or bromance) and still feel genuine attraction for women? it is already a weird to try to out people who have openly and fervently denied the secret relationship allegations or the sexuality speculation, but it’s also weird to pretend like these guys can only be straight or closeted gay men, and no one considers the possibility of bisexuality, kinda proving why so many bi men stay closeted. if the thought of a bi harry styles is that unthinkable no wonder he identifies as unlabeled now.
btw you’re amazing shanspeare ❤ i love your work as usual
Thank you! THIS part of whole ordeal should be talked about more.
In the Internet there are absoluts, there are no grey zones so they are gay on cisthet there is not other option
this! as a person who was 12/13 when all this started, I fell down the Larry rabbit hole pretty quickly and was honestly obsessed, but as the time passed and I figured my own sexuality (I’m bi) I started to feel really weird about everything. I often participated in group discussions about Larry and 98% of the time I was the only person saying “maybe they’re bi”. It felt awful. Then I just quit the fandom completely.
dumbass
This is just more conspiracy speculation on the sexuality of men you don't know.
- It doesn't matter if you say Bi instead of Gay, this conspiracism isn't made any better.
- It cannot be Bi Erasure, as nobody identifying as bisexual is being erased.
- If a person doesn't identify with any labels, that is OK. It means nothing.
honestly... shipping real people is just so creepy
it can straight up ruin friendships, and i know i'd be so uncomfortable knowing fans are examining each and every move of mine when i decided to be anywhere near a close friend or coworker
I mean those things happens because of unhinged fans (and tabloids) and unhinged fans (and tabloids) are unhinged regardless of RPF. RPF by itself is fine and has a long and mostly chill tradition.
Imagine if they put that energy into investigating stuff that's actually important.
@@drawingsticks5333 knowing people see every interaction you have with a friend as sexual or romantic is uncomfortable.
They're not dolls. They're humans.
it's all in what people do with shipping, and enjoying an idea doesn't hurt anyone unless you go somewhere that does. people always frame it like, how would you feel if someone wrote a story about you and someone romantically? personally, an aquaintance sent me a story she wrote that involved us hooking up in a sculpture garden, using my (first) name. it was a well-written story and i enjoyed it. it's not like she was profiting off it or using it to harrass me or anything, so why should i mind? unfortunately, when you have a large enough community of people, someone tends to take it too far or behave inappropriately, and that's the case with larry, but that's not a feature of RPF as a whole.
big name writers make money off RPF all the time, and because they're respected and generally men, no one minds. when young queer women do it, they're mocked and villainized. life is, as usual, more complex than that. and i do personally think it's kinda weird that there's a professional play that the playwright profits off of about him marrying a real (straight) professional tennis player (but i don't think it would be weird if he published the same thing anonymously on ao3). i keep getting ads for one about hilary clinton having an affair with a chinese businessman.
@@drawingsticks5333its only fine TO YOU because you are not the one having your every interaction with your friend be dissected and judged.
Phan got the ultra rare good ending in the doomed yaoi cinematic universe.
LMAO
and they're even touring again who does it like them
no literally im so glad they were my 2012 obsession lmao
If someone asked me if Dan and Phil are married or together i would not be able to reply, because - I MEANNN THE STUFF DAN'S SAID but also their privacy and just
@@kari7966 “basically they’ve alluded to the idea that they probably would if Dan didn’t have intense commitment issues but they share a mortgage sooo idk lol”
I can totally see a bunch of teenage boys thinking it's absolutely hilarious that two of their mates are being accused of being in a relationship and going along with it for only that reason 😅
Honestly that would make total sense
I was a Larry in like 2013, not seriously I just watched some compilations and read some fanfics. A year or two ago I had my husband watch one of those Larry cute moments videos for fun and he was just like “that’s just teenage boys hanging out and having fun, it’s definitely not that deep.” Honestly I probably just didn’t spend enough time with boys when I was into Larry to realize that for myself.
@cassiea13245678 yeah sucks because we all say we want men to be more open but as soon as they do it's feminized or sexualized... im sick of it here lol
@@cassiea13245678 I agree that all the boys grabbing each other on stage and being affectionate with each other was nothing but with Harry and Louis it was different. Louis goes to possibly kiss Harry in Wellington and Harry has to twirl Louis around and tell him “we’re in public”. The interview where Harry tries to discreetly caress Louis’ arm while Louis tries to discreetly move his arm back so Harry can reach. The interview where Louis blows Harry a kiss and Harry then caresses Louis face and then notices the camera guy filming them and Louis makes an oops expression.
@@threeangels9318 You do a whole lot of projection here stating your reading of the situation as a fact when all of this is just a speculation. You have no idea what they said to each other, what they thought in any of this moments or what was the intentions behind their moves.
I went to college (UK vocational college so I was 16) with a girl who was a very gentle and sweet Larry shipper. She had a handmade sign that she'd take to each concert that read "Its okay to be gay, we all still love you" And she always said that even if she was wrong, she hoped it helped closeted gay people watching. I always think of her when 1D comes up, even though its 8 years since I've last seen her!
❤🥲
The picking away of Brianna's pregnancy pisses me off so much. It reminds me of when my cousin had her first child. She didn't show practically until she was five months in and became quite big very quickly. Pregnant bodies work differently depending on the person.
These people are nuts in every way, and I personally saw that already when I was in the fandom. Though my input being a mixer as well might have influenced my thoughts, as I was seeing live how hardcore directioners treated the boys' girlfriends.
I took a Child Development class in my freshman year of High School. There’s actually a condition where a pregnant woman won’t show at all until later in her pregnancy. Your aunt, and seemingly Brianna as well, are examples of that. More people should be aware that pregnancy is not always a linear development, its like a stock market graph, sometimes its fast and other times its slow (hopefully pregnancy is never decreasing, though. That’d be bad.)
Are you aware that multiple of her pregnancy pictures were actually taken from other pregnant ladies pages? Like there’s actual solid proof of this? I can’t lie I do find that awfully strange
@@OhsweetOhnoif you think that's wild look at stealth pregnancies some people don't even show or realise until they literally go into labour
Ah, the early 2010s, where men had to use the word "bromance" to describe a caring friendship.
As a lesbian who knows almost nothing about one direction, this is the only way I'd want to learn more. Ah, the beauty of research. Thanks for the delicious content, Shansphere.
Also a lesbian, I never understood boy bands but I got sooo much Larry content through Tumblr because I was Invested™️ in media, not real people, shipping so some people I followed were very into Larry.
same. i didn't even know all the members' names and probably only heard one of their songs before but Shanspeare had me locked in for the conspiracies.
if you weren't into 1D during the early 2010s it was defenetly Avril Lavigne
-signed, a person that wasn't sentient during the early 2010s
also lesbian. clicked on this video thinking “Larry Tomlinson” was a cute way to say harry styles without directly mentioning harry styles (idk why- algorithms?). I didn’t know there was a Louie but you bet I was glued to the screen for the whole 2 hrs lol
I would always feel super sorry for any woman who got into a relationship with a man who has a wide young female fanbase behind them, because the level of misogyny she'll be facing will be astronomical
Taylor Russell is either insanely brave, or she just doesn't give a fuck. She dated Harry and there were rumours she had a fling with Timothee Chalamet.
@@ghostinthecity Or she was a beard and it was just a pr contract
@@threeangels9318you’re the type of person this commenter is referring to.
@@threeangels9318 You when you find out some people are bi: 😱🤯
@@ghostinthecity Yes and some people are gay no matter how much some fans don’t want them to be 🤷♀
what’s crazy is they’re grown ass adults now and have no obligations or quote unquote “contracts” to keep their relationship a secret yet they still aren’t together so what are they even rooting for💀
Also, this ain't America in Europe you cannot contract people to not date, not come out etc. It's null because it interferes with personal rights too much
Also you have Harry Styles parading the LGBTQ flag in his concerts like nobody’s business and you mean to tell me he would be hiding his sexuality
Yes they are now adults but we don’t know for how many years the NDAs they signed are supposed to run for.
They might have been silenced to never address the rumours about their « supposed » relationship.
Guys remember some NDAs can be valid for 50+ years
I think it's kinda sad that two cishet presenting guys can't just be sweet with each other without people "suspecting things". Like, this is the exact reason why men behave so weirdly towards each other, for fear of this kind of thing. It feels oddly regressive.
And the shippers then came up with the whole "The management is forcing them to pretend to be straight!"...... instead of thinking of how this whole thing might've affected their relationship in public.
I remember these two youtubers (friends of Dan and Phil) who stopped hanging out together because of the aggressive shipping by their fandoms. At one point it stops you from being genuine in a video and that ruins everything.
I remember once meeting these 3 teens (one girl and two boys) from my old highschool (I'd graduated the year before) and one of the boys confessed to me that she shipped them.... her friends....
It made them very uncomfortable and she would not stop.
@@Carolina57685Shippers will bend over backwards forwards and sideways to make everything apply to their own narrative. If you don't want to be shipped that means you're queer baiting/leading the fans on and it's not their fault they can't stop themselves. If you are okay with it that automatically consents for your fans to do anything they want
(I don't think you were intending on this nor believe your comment suggested this idea I just like to talk) A lot of manosphere guys (especially in the twenty tens) would use the idea that straight men not being able to be friends is exclusive to men and therefore the fault of women.
It happens a lot when men and women are friends to the point where it's normalized and does occasionally (especially in recent years) happen when women have female friends
i was just thinking the same thing. all of these affectionate behaviors are normal for teen girls, but when any boy or man is affectionate with others it is seen as romantic/sexual
@KC-2049I do understand that but I think it gets a bit complex when you do see these male companionships that do seem like they’re taking our experiences and painting it as platonic, I just feel gaslit sometimes? Like I’m all for men being more open with their emotions and being able to have more affectionate friendships but I don’t think most in media understand how to do that without just like making them seem like two guys that are really into each other but no you’re wrong they’re just friends obviously!
Larry Stylinson is a lie ❌ Hobama 4ever ✔✔✔
Real ones remember Hobama
What is hobama
@@monique_wangraharry x obama
HOBAMA SHIPPER FOR LIFE ❤🔥❤🔥❤🔥❤🔥🦅🦅🦅🦅
only person who gets it
I'm so glad you're making a video about this! I HATE shipping of celebrities. Ship the fake characters all you want, but when we ship celebrities we continue to subject them to the "paper doll and Barbie" treatment. They're real people, with real feelings, very real platonic relationships with the people they're being shipped with.
I don’t believe they were together, and possibly still are, because I thought ‘oh they’d look cute together’, I’m going to ship them. I watched interviews, concerts, video taken by fans (such as Wellington) and thought ‘I bet they’re a couple’.
I remember this as well as the people shipping Camila Cabello and Lauren Jauregi from 5th harmony. In the case of the latter, Lauren later came out to say that the online speculation made her journey in embracing her queer identity difficult and damaged her friendships with the other girls. She started to question her own behaviour toward the others after seeing discourse over-analyzing interactions. It played into stereotypes of queer women being "predatory" and she felt the need to delay her coming out.
Speculation like this has tangible real life harms, especially to those who actually are queer, like Lauren and Harry
this was also the case with dan and phil. i genuinely feel like everyone who speculates on real people's sexualities and relationships needs to watch dan's coming out video because it is so insightful. at one point he described the speculation and shipping as feeling like "[he] was back at school again, surrounded by threatening people trying to expose [him] for their entertainment."
1:42:57 imagine growing up and reading online that people wish you wouldn't exist. Strangers on the internet have constantly hated your existence ever since your conception, to your birth and even your current existence. Terrifying, honestly.
I feel bad for that Freddie baby
“and liam… i hope he’s doing well. genuinley” this video being posted a day after maya henry’s video is so ironic
Wait whats going on with Liam lol? Im super out of the loop with most of this stuff
@@roseyoung44 so his ex has said that he has a bunch of 1D fans added on snap that he’s been talking to for years (implied that it wasn’t just talking though) and that he’s been harassing her and trying to contact her post breakup
@@roseyoung44 u should watch film cooper's video about it
@@roseyoung44 I think he supposedely was abusive to her, I saw something on TikTok, a shitty font of info
@@roseyoung44 he openly preys on young female fans. tons of evidence. his ex maya henry wrote a book about his abuse (like harassment and physical attacks) that only recently started getting attention because she started recently getting mobbed online for talking about their relationship. After she spoke out about the fan harassment on tiktok and how she shouldn't be attacked for talking about her experience in an abusive relationship, there were tons of other fellow women who started coming out and corroborating her story with their own.
received the shock of a lifetime last year when i logged into a tumblr acct i hadn't used for 5+ years to see one of my mutuals STILL posting from the larry stylinson trenches
Zaaaaaaaaaaaammmnnnnn😅 lol
Internet Infamy is quickly becoming my favourite TH-cam series, thank you Mother. So excited for this one
I’m so honored!
i was today years old when i learned that theres no one direction member named larry, the ship was just so big back in the day that i thought this larry stylinson guy was a member of the band
Omg I just commented the same thing LMAO I really thought Larry was a person 😭😭😭
It’s wild to me that the Larry fans never considered either of them also were just genuinely attracted to women? There are a lot of sexualities that are attracted to multiple genders, and while a lot of the terms are more common nowadays bisexual was definitely in use - 2010 was either right during or right after the bi emo/scene boy culture moment and they referenced Freddie Mercury who identified as bisexual. Bi (and pan and other sexualities) erasure is a hell of a thing
Every erasure of reality's boundaries really illustrates that Harry/Louis, Taylor/Karlie, Camila/Lauren etc are with the lens of celebrities as fictional characters rather than multi-layered, imperfect humans who don't live their lives for fan fiction stories.
That’s the best way to maintain their belief in Louis and Harry’s long-term relationship, if you think about it. Every girlfriend in their lives is a threat to this belief, but if they both are gay, then there’s absolutely no way they actually date women.
Same logic applies to their insistence that Freddie is the son of his grandmother and her husband, instead of saying that he’s the child of Briana but not from Louis. Because if Briana was never pregnant, then the resemblance with Louis is not a threat to their conspiracy as the whole pregnancy was fake to begin with
Or you know it could also be possible that Harry and Louis are both gay
“Real new moms..” I literally walked out of the hospital looking like I never gave birth after having my baby. Larries are absolutely unhinged
How dare TH-cam hide this from me for 20 seconds.
I had to wait 3 whole minutes 😞
16 whole minutes!!!!!
I just got it 4 hours late
they hid it from me for five hours
Try 10 days
hearing the words polyvore in 2024 felt like getting cold water dumped on me
absolutely crazy how often i used it
MY GOD, i feel the exact same way lmfao
as someone who was a huge larrie when i was like 14, this video was so interesting. i didn't even know half of this lore because i left the fandom in 2015 before the band even went on hiatus. it feels almost crazy that people kept believing in larry even in 2024. obsessing so much about real people's private lives is absolutely unhinged. i can excuse it on tweens but you can't be like that as a full grown adult
So strange how you and Mila Tequila both uploaded long retrospectives on One Direction days before Liam’s death. I wasn’t even a fan but I’m in shock about it. Way too soon.
i appreciate the silly comic relief of the rbb saga before getting hit with the absolute dumpster fire of people speculating on a pregnant woman’s body and an actual kid’s family.
Hit the nail on the head with this
RBB truly had me on edge back in the day. Things started to feel invasive and uncomfortable after babygate, and as an adult looking back at this whole timeline it makes me sorry and sad for Louis and Harry. I look back at those early videos and I see that what they had was a close friendship, but who among us hasn’t had an innocent crush on a friend? It just makes me think that people that young shouldn’t be as famous as they were. We all deserve to have privacy in our lives as we figure out how to be people with relationships and friendships.
Yeah, and if they were young and questioning, then shining a billion spotlights on them was not only an awful thing to do, but also pretty unproductive in terms of allowing them to figure out if they actually wanted anything from each other.
I think another reason why Harry Styles and Taylor Swift's relationship was so scrutinized is because two large shipping fandoms we're overlapped, on one hand it was the people who thought Harry was gay and Taylor was his beard and on the other hand there are the Gaylors, Taylor Swift fans who think Taylor is gay and was presumably dating Diana Agron from Glee at the time, or starting to date Karlie Kloss. Loving this video so far and would love a deep dive into Gaylor, Swiftgron and Kaylor because I think the shippers were (and still are for some of them) just as unhinged and parasocial as the Larries
right, there's also the directioners that hated the idea of larry being a thing, and of harry having a girlfriend, so they dragged taylor to the ground, I mean "slut" is about that lol
I don’t think gaylors were much of a thing at the time tbh. Kaylor was the birth of gaylors as a movement overall, I feel like
maybe it was gaylors, but could it not also have been the misogyny taylor faced at the time for being a woman that dated a lot that caused the scrutiny? like I can imagine that in the eyes of the general public, its kinda sus of taylor to start dating the most popular member of a very new and recently popular boy band
I’m not gonna lie. About a year or two ago (I think?), while Harry and Taylor were both single, I wanted them to get back together. Just for the lulz.
@@alexanderstone9463 that's around the time she released 1989 tv, I get it.
Very carefully framing the shot so the Harry poster looks like it says “larry” - that’s ART that’s CINEMA that’s DESIGN that’s GENIUS that’s-
aaah, i remember being 15ish and watching larry compilations, reading fanfics, theorizing in facebook groups, reading updated lore... there is so much to unpack, as i was a part of the fandom for years, there are flashbacks coming to me lmao i honestly had forgotten all about it because i moved fandoms. as the years passed, i started to question everything and now i'm at a point where i realized a lot was just a coincidence that we gave more importance that it needed because we wanted to believe SO bad that it was real. not gonna lie, it was so much fun, but now that i'm an adult i realize it's just that i love fandom spaces and that one thing is thinking two people have great chemistry and look cute together and the other thing is whatever larries have going on. i'm glad i grew up and accepted the fact that i was being crazy. now, i just feel sorry about it all. i find it incredibly sad that louis and harry's friendship was affected by this crazy behaviour. it is insane to me that there's still adults believing in these sorts of things, like, there comes a time when you realize that even if they had something going on it was none of our business at all and people meddling in made it worse :/ like we can't stop people from shipping, but if you're going to do that at least have the decency to do so in places where the real people aren't going to see it, you know? god. to me, the worst thing was louis son being in the middle of it all, like that poor babyboy had nothing to do with this mess and people were calling him fake (i admit that when it was first confirmed i didn't believe it but then i saw his face and was like... that's a tiny louis!) i think a lot of us were just way too deep into the conspiracy and felt good about "knowing the truth" that we didn't want to think of other possibilities because the thought of this crafted romance was way too "amazing" to be destroyed. i remember specifically reading a comment that said something along of "if larry isn't true, then it was the most beautiful romance ever created" which sums it up pretty well on how we felt back then
Grown adults to this day believing in Larry is so ridiculous and honestly disturbing.
i once accidentally came across a Larry Twitter account, and i found that she literally has a whole family 😭 like girl instead of fighting in Louis comments about Larry how about focus on your child at home omg
the worst is that they still believe it until now like, leave these men alone 😭
The most intense ones are all 40+ married with children 😭😭
@@kupotenshi omg, ive seen those on tumblr 💀💀 honestly im nearly 14 and yet i STILL have more sense than those goofy people, that should be a wake up call atp
sometimes....you really ARE too old for certain things.
Does anyone else remember that Harry Styles was in an MCU movie once
😂😂 a lot of people hate superheros nowdays,
Real ones remember the Icarly episode
@@kaodi6993why? Like not being on the offense I was just wondering
harry styles got dunkirk (a very good film mind you) with his only other acting job being that icarly episode
@@arbitarious mostly because both burnout of the genre plus some really bad films back to back, superheroes are still pretty respected in the form of tv and comic books however
My top shipping rule is "Don't ship real people" and this is a pretty good example of why.
Yes. Very much this. I do think it's okay to do in a light hearted manner if the celebrities involved specify that it is okay. Anything outside of that feels like a massive breach of privacy.
We've seen multiple times how it can damage friendships and force actually queer people deeper into the closet
@@legendswarble2845 I honestly don't really pay attention to celebrities outside of the media that they're in. Like I see them as "off the clock" and basically don't interact.
But that's just a me thing, I do get people being into that culture.
I remember I shipped real people as preteen but thankfully I stopped doing it once I saw post explaining how creepy it is which made me realise that
@Desi-Designs Agree. It's not my thing really. I'm an actor so it's a little too real for me to get into as a fan. I know how uncomfortable I would be if it was me. But, if the folks involved aren't uncomfortable I don't have a moral issue with it, especially if they think it's fun. I know that happens some times.
Honestly though for most Larries (or at least some) it’s not about shipping. First and foremost we want Harry and Louis (and all the boys) to be happy regardless if whether they’re together or not. But with all the evidence it’s also hard to then think they most definitely are not together.
WHILE WATCHING THIS LIAM PAYNE FUCKING DIED
I KNOW ITS FUCKING CRAZY
I watched this yesterday and I'm creeped out by the timing
THE TRANSITION INTO THE OLD LOOK OOOOOOOOHHHH SHANSPEARE YOURE SPEAKING MY LANGUAGE!!
i'm too sapphic to think of "i can't change" as from anything other than "she keeps me warm"
Girl the timing of this video dropping and liam getting canceled is crazy
isnt it his third cancellation since the band broke up or smth? what can he even be cancelled from anymore it’s not like he’s putting out music or doing anything substantial 💀
wait what did Liam do this time lol
@@merlumili turns out he was really abusive to his ex maya henry, would talk shit about the other members then go to their concerts so that would be in the news rather than his shit personality
HUUUUUHHH?
@@ellies28 turns out? didn't that come out ages ago? like his first cancellation
Being a Larry truther in 2012 was really fun until my brain developed past being a preteen, and I realized we were really weird for that
Edit: imagine Freddy getting older and googling his own name 🥴
no frrr i thought i was so cool and smart for being a larry truther in 2012 and then i got a bit older and i was like damn i was legit insane back then ok
It's like that meme where a girl was a stan until she started getting medication or deal with the black mould in their house 😆
@@grandempressvicky6387when you said "meme" i thought you meant like a silly comic, not someone actually blaming the mold in their house for being a larry truther in a tweet 😭
this is my exact experience😭
@KC-2049 i remember that frerard conspiracies were a BIG thing back in the day, plus petekey/peterick and even ryden 😭 they still are a thing but more in a joke way nowadays lol
7:43 Hey Shan, I got some bad news.......
Jesus Christ it aged poorly a literal day later and then somehow managed to age even worse. 😬😬😬
🫣
That Reddit threat around 55:00 is so gross. That one person saying "I would need a non-larry explanation for every proof" - how did you not mature AT ALL in the intervening years and still believe these people owe you anything at all? How about you finally take these two *human beings* at their word? FFS
Like I have great compassion for queer teenagers who were desperately hanging on to the idea of gay idols (even though it wasn't okay then, either). But these are grown women now and they HAVE to know better.
Beatlemania for people who used Polyvore brings back insane memories
that line was a kick in the gut laced with nostalgia
I was absolutely heartbroken when Polyvore was bought 💔 I was midway through an edit as well 😭
dude that and the first mili second of the infamous stair diary video frame did it for me
Do you guys know any web or something to create outfits? 😫😫😫
this video is gonna BLOW. UP. the timing is perfect
How is the timing perfect?
@@e.k.o5412 Liam is having a bit of a scandal, and it's dragging up a bunch of other memories. people are talking about their 1d fan experiences
Chat he died 💀💀💀💀
💀 shouldn't have said that
This comments timing is actually the crazy part lol
I can't believe there was a fake baby conspiracy in both the Larry and Gaylor fandoms. And I also can't believe I've watched hours of video content about these fandoms when I have never been involved in either.
Also like, in regards to the pregnancy speculation. Aside from it just being generally gross to hyperfixate on a person's body and how it's changing, fixating on a pregnant person in particular feels outright cruel. I can't imagine being put through that during such a vulnerable time, especially in the early months when the risk of pregnancy loss is much higher. Plus, anytime the "fake pregnancy" conspiracy is thrown around when someone isn't "showing" to the degree the public thinks is acceptable, it just makes me tilt my head. I've known so many people who didn't start showing (especially on the first pregnancy) until like five or six months in. Everyone's body is different, so why are we placing weird as fuck expectations on pregnant people? Sorry, that got me heated.
I met a woman once who was fully nine months pregnant and you never would have guessed she was pregnant at all, even in a fitted t shirt, and it's so misogynistic to go after the woman in these situations, and yeah, maybe never say anything about anyone's body, ever, and she doesn't owe you anything about her body and baby. You're right to be heated. It's awful.
The misogyny in the larry fandom is off the charts
Oof the gaylors.. another fun bunch
I cannot verbally explain the sheer anger and audacity I felt at 54:00. These people are absolutely delusional. They look at something that was directed at them and choose to ignore it. I've said this once but I'll just keep saying it; Larries are the q anons of celebrity shipping. Seriously. These people need help.
This is wild, in the middle of watching this episode I get the news about Liam smh so crazy
People saying a child shouldn't exist tells me this person should be in intense therapy. This is not someone I want possibly being my colleague or cousin.
The irony is that the "evil management" that these Larry people seem to think were/are closeting Harry and Louis, probably told them in the beginning to play up the bromance since it was popular, they also obviously thought it was light-hearted and funny at the start. Then it had to be forcibly shut down because of the deranged harassment. I've never understood shipping real people and I'll never agree with it. Those are REAL people, with feelings and lives that have nothing to do with those shipping them. Even if the relationship is real or not. Shipping real people is, in my opinion, borderline stalking behavior and often crosses the line into s*xual harassment. I appreciate that these corners of fandom may offer a place for people to cope with their own personal issues, but I would argue that it is an unhealthy coping mechanism and should be treated as such. Also, if it were true that Harry and Louis were dating, then these "Larrys" were actively trying to out them and that's never okay. I really liked Harry's quote at the end.
It's criminal how artful, well researched, and beautifully presented each of Shanspeare's videos are and that this channel doesn't have millions of subscribers yet. Mostly commenting just to boost the channel. Never heard of this Larry Stylinson before, a little too old for One Direction, but I feel aptly educated and like I need a few showers to wash away the ick factor from this sordid bit of recent history. Keep up the amazing work.
Edit (RIP I CRIED I'M SORRY IDK WHAT TO SAY I JUST FOUND OUT) 10-16-24🖤
Perfect timing😂 Liam is being silly online again and it made me miss this crazy time
Not being silly.... being a menace to society
Everything I’ve learned about Liam in the past 48 hours is more than I’ve learned over the past 10 years
I can't believe it was zayn who threw liam to the wall and not long haired harry tbh
I knew it was zayn. I don't know how. I guess I just heard a rumor and was like "that checks out"
@@virginiawatts4B i was kinda hoping it was Nial because it would've been the most the funniest option
@@virginiawatts4B i was kinda hoping it was Nial because it would've been the most the funniest option
these past few days, I've been getting a lot of video essays about 1D. It feels surreal to wake up yesterday with such tragic news. I've been going back to the boys' music and overall just reminiscing about that era of my life as a tween going into teenhood. Now as an adult, hearing Liam's passing, broke me and made me realize how much impact they had in my life.
My small hometown (about 1,000 people) is the same name as a 5SOS ship and the Google search for my town was taken over by that ship until like 2018.
Fantastic video. I was never a directioner, but I stumbled upon the Larry conspiracy a few years ago and occasionally check back in with a few blogs out of morbid fascination. The one point I would add is that while sure, the fandom provides a safe space for queer larries to explore their own identities and challenge heteronormative narratives, they also reinforce a lot of misogynistic ones. Obligatory #notalllarries, but a lot of them relentlessly attack the women in the men’s lives, not just “beards” but female coworkers, friends, and family members, meanwhile platonic male counterparts only get a fraction of the ire. There’s this prevalent narrative that women can’t accomplish anything for themselves nor do they want to, they just want to attach themselves to an innocent rich and famous man in order to leech off his success. Harry Styles’ most recent girlfriend, Taylor Russel, is an actress who had decent career before dating him but larries insisted all her movies were awful and no one had ever heard of her before she started “bearding” for him. His sister recently put out a book where she discussed her own mental health struggles and referenced the forced outing of other celebrities as a bad thing, so the larries attacked her for “playing the victim” because “no one would ever read her book except Harry Styles fans so she should be grateful they pay her any attention.” At least one blog with a sizable following has recently gone so far as to say that most sexual misconduct allegations against male celebrities are made by “attention-seeking gold-diggers” who were either jilted by rejection from a famous person or eager to take money from “evil management” as a closeting maneuver. But if anyone tries to criticize them for being misogynistic, they pull out “how dare you accuse me, a queer woman, of being a misogynist?” With all that, I reiterate your point of asking how safe a space can be if it has to bulldoze other people’s spaces?
theres a lot of misogyny in fandom despite how much of it is built by and for women and girls. i think a lot of it has to do with that "not like other girls" attitude that develops from the ire stereotypically feminine interests draw from the wider culture, causing these girls to feel the need to justify their behavior as somehow different or better than that of their non-fandom peers. it's present not just in the larry fandom, but in fandom culture at large-just look at the way fandoms treat female characters that "get in the way" of gay ships. attempts to criticize this behavior are then shut down in the same way as you described, and overall it creates this environment where youre never encouraged to reflect on how your behavior impacts others and the only legitimate response to being asked to self-reflect is to double down, because all criticism is lumped into the same category regardless of its validity. though that could be said of a lot of online bubbles, i suppose. idk. it's kinda sad to me.
I totally agree.
Queer women can still do/say mysoginistic and homophobic things. Even if there are many of them who all agree that they're right and everyone else is homophobic and sexist.
But that doesn't change the truth. Just makes it really difficult for others to interact with them when it comes to their shipping.
As a queer woman I've had enough of people from different fandoms calling me a homophobe for saying that I don't think it's appropriate to use a sexuality label for someone who clearly does not label themselves in any way and does not even talk about their romantic interests/partners in any way.
Even though I've said it in different fandoms, about different people, the obsessive shippers always have the same "you're just homophobic" reply.
You just can't win.
@@triangleman2627oh yeah belittling female characters in favor of male ones is a huge issue across all fandom, and I’m glad you mention the specific hatred of the characters whose only crime is “getting in the way” of the gay ships. Larries and other real life shipping conspiracies take the worst of broader fandom toxicity and make it all that much worse by applying it all to real human beings. So when it comes to “beards”, they aren’t just characters “getting in the way” of a ship, they’re evil homophobic monsters out to get the sweet innocent gay babies so harassing them is praxis actually /s.
The “not like other girls” this is also a good point to bring up, as larries and other shipping conspiracy theorists often frame themselves as a superior class of fan as opposed to the straight (derogatory) casuals who “believe everything they’re told.” More specifically, I’ve seen a lot of them fantasize about how much Tomlinson and Styles love the work of “real” fans who pick up on their “signals” meanwhile being ashamed of all the others the evil management wants them to cater too.
@@Tessa_GrThis, and it happens outside of fandom too. I’m also queer, but one time some people made the assumption I fell under a different specific label than what I am behind my back, and they went around telling people I was this other thing for a long time before I heard what they were doing. Once I finally did and explained what I actually am, they got mad at me for “lying” to them or otherwise being deliberately misleading. To this day I have no idea what exactly I did to “mislead” them, but now I’m super sensitive about labels in general (which is part of why I’m not being specific) and am especially uncomfortable with people speculating on the sexualities of other people. People like the larries argue that it helps support LGBTQIA’s+ acceptance in general to speculate about famous people, but does it really? If someone famous was actually in the closet for whatever reason, would people scrutinizing their every action really create a supportive environment to come out to?
@@aconstantstateofbladerunne5251Sadly, weird label-enforcing has distanced me and several queer friends of mine from the community. And there is a huge sexism problem even amongst WLW, but we're apparently not ready for that conversation. 🤷♀️
I’m stressed out of my skull prepping for Hurricane Milton and this is the sweet, sweet immersive distraction that I desperately needed. Shanspeare, you made my day with this!
Stay safe! 🙏🏽❤
floridians just never get a break
Hope you and everyone around you is safe!!! ❤️❤️❤️❤️
Im watching this video on a fandom i was never in and realizing this happens in a lot of fandoms. Would kill to watch a video like this on My Chem lore cuz it goes so deep
Same, all i could think off was about frerard and how people still ship it to this day.
following this video was easy as an ex-rooster teeth fan who used to ship mavin. what a time.
i remember there being a few in depth compilations of frerard 😭 unsure if they're still up tho
The Summer of Like lore goes crazy
Adore the camera angle cutting half of the H on harry to make larry - you knew what you were doing!!!!
man watching this as a former larry is crazy, after liams death ive found myself coming back to one direction content, rediscovering names events and moments. It also brought me back to larry. I had long forgotten my belief of them being together since i left the fandom. I was a quarantine fan so at an impressionable age of 13 was when i found them and managed to catch upto events from 10 years past in an impressive amount of time! I also believed them to be together until 2020, from analysing the similarity in their lyrics to their solo career lyrics. But, soon it became adamantly clear that their lives werent exactly intertwined post the hiatus. All this blabbering and i fail to make my point clear, basically what i mean to say is that this is an incredibly well constructed video and the explanations are probable enough. However, i do believe during band years something was there that maybe ended in a bitter breakup. After watching so many candid clips, of not only interviews but from when they didnt know they were on the clock, to fans unfortunately breaching their privacy and recording them from afar. It wouldnt be wrong to say that something did happen. While your analysations of the harm of conspiracy theories holds very much true! It's just nothing more than two boys infatuated with one another. This is not the first time this has happened. Older queer people have opened up about how and what circumstances they were pushed to portray a narrative and how extreme management companies can be. Anyway not trying to criticise you or anything! Just saying its incredible that such a simple fact(maybe not fact but you get it) got so out of hand. Anyway from a uhh quite?? or weak larrie?? whatever you said i just wanna say you handled the topic very well :)
i am in the niche audience this video is for
The queen is back AND with lore from the 2010's?!?!? I'm not worthy of this gift 😭🤣
a two hour shanspeare video on my lockdown hyperfixation???!!?! hell yessss
LMAO SAME
Broooo this was my experience too
LMAOO SAME-- 2020 to 2022 was prime Larry time for me haha. Fun while it lasted, but looking back a lot of the stuff was just creepy and disrespectful to the boys
Having been pregnant and had no baby at the end of it (full term stillbirth), hearing the way fans scrutinised that girl's pregnancy and accused her of faking it made me especially angry.
"it's a game of angles" is such a sherlock holmes thing to say about a baby bump
also cannot imagine the stress and misery of being pregnant and stalked by thousands of people
i love fandom deep dives so i clicked on this as soon as I saw it. The different types of larries and their motivations is rich enough to be the backdrop of a fantasy world's politics. much like how george r.r. martin based ASOIAF off the war of the roses, you could make an intricate political system in a fantasy world based on the different factions of larries.
jokes aside your work is amazing, cinematic and full of nuance, as always
Move over Britney and William Shake...I am here for my one true Speare
i was literally watching this video when i read about liam's passing. truly heartbraking
my favorite theory is that they might be bi or something like that and they were maybe into each other at some point but just... aren't a couple, they moved on, stuff that happens to anyone. I think inventing some weird conspiracy around it is weird, but I also like the idea of two teenagers falling in love because it's a cute idea. But they're not teenagers anymore and it stopped being cute long ago, I really don't like when people go overboard with shipping real people. Especially when we have no idea what happens behind the scenes.
Also I never was a "larrie" I was literally 10 years old in 2012, I barely knew english and the only thing I cared for online was winx club lmao
there's nothing to make a conspiracy about lmao
@@asjsk8286 also an opinion. However people are making a conspiracy about them, and this video goes over that - did you finish it?
as a teenage girl who got into the mcr rabbit hole about two years ago, i know a thing or two about real life shipping and parasociality, especially when it comes to frerard 😭 at heart most of the culture surrounding those ships is harmless but the line between harmless and creepy is very blurry. a shan video about irl shipping is everything i needed rn HAHAHA
i thought about frerard too lmao i remember being 15 and reading all of the theories on it, so funny
I was on the Frerard bus back when it was super big (late 2000s) and oooof it got crazy. Not as bad as Brendon/Ryan from Panic but it was a mess. Shipping real people always ends up ugly and weird. Glad I grew out of that in high school 😂
My hot take on real person shipping is that video montages of cute/affectionate moments are harmless and fanfic is okay as long as it's posted to the appropriate sites, but that there has to be an understanding that it isn't real. Once you start doing body language analysis, trashing someone's real partner, publicly digging for evidence or bringing your ship up to the real people involved, you're crossing a line. It stops being fun.
@@WinningSidekickagree 100%
This whole Larry Stylinson thing is not only disgusting but also a prime example of biphopic attitudes.
I was literally just thinking what if they did have feelings for each other or maybe secretly were together when they were younger but decided to go different ways! I.e. what if they are bi!? None of the fans considered that two things can be true at once.
also I agree that the whole thing was very immoral, just wanted to touch on the bi-erasure piece.
@@pookiebear2779 I would honestly be so mad if I was famous and my fans kept bringing up an ex situationship I had when I was 16 and closeted
Yes, how disgusting to believe that 2 members of a boyband, both of them queer, feel in love but were strongly advised to hide their relationship. I mean it’s not like it’s happened before. There have never been closeted boyband members before, what are Larries even thinking?
@@minako10 and we’re so sexy for it
Elder millenial here, was too jaded by the time One Direction got popular but I have only watched 1 minute and 19 seconds and you have me eager to learn anything and everything about whoever this Larry dude is. Absolutely LOVED this intro.
I was also watching this when I found out. Wow. I’m not a 1D girlie personally but watched mila tequila’s 1D video yesterday and this one just now. Super eerie. His poor son and family.
As a queer woman I kind of hate ppl using their own queerness to justify this. There are plenty of actual out queer people for us to support. We don’t need to bother people who either aren’t queer or don’t want to come out. And as with Johnlock, it’s mostly women fetishizing two men together.
That's how you know none of those women in larry fandom are queer or gay because they don't get inherently grossed out by how their fandom treats women and how heavily they rely on stereotypes to "clock" queer people.
@@kupotenshi yeah totally. It's toxic toward women, promotes bi erasure, and disregards the idea that two straight men can express sincere feelings of friendship. Larrys don't accept the possibility of platonic love, because apparently men having feelings is gay,
@@kupotenshiThis just blatantly denies the fact that queer women can still perpetuate misogyny and homophobia. Plenty of Larries are queer and were projecting their own feelings onto the two guys. There’s tons of comments under this video talking about how they as former Larries are queer themselves or figured out they were queer through participation in this subculture.
@@Maggie-vt8wp "plenty of larries are queer" citation needed. I was a "larry shipper" in 2014 before the word "larries" even existed. As a gay person, the story of oppression/closeting drew me in and I was sympathetic and wanted them to be free. The longer I was in there, the more I saw that the gfs were called "beards" as a way to hate/dismiss/mock them (bearding wasn't seen as a woman helping a gay man, like it is recognized throughout gay history) Yes, there were gay and queer women who found their way into the fandom because of a lie about queer oppression, but the MAJORITY of larries spreading theories today are not gay and perpetuate harm (biphobia, misogyny, conspiracy theorism) and it's actually really sad that young queer people got caught up in this toxic conspiracy theory.
@@kupotenshi “Citation needed”? Did you finish watching the video or did you just miss the discussion of queer Larries? You said that Larries are “not actually queer,” but that is entirely untrue as you can see from the many comments from former Larries who’ve talked about discovering their queerness through the shipping culture or projecting their own feelings onto Harry and Louis as proxies for their own inner turmoil. The study Shan mentions has a quote from a current Larry who is queer themselves. Queer women/people are not exempt from perpetuating misogyny and homophobia. I don’t disagree that it’s very sad that young queer people looking for support and community find themselves caught up in this conspiracy. That’s not what my comment was about.
The dehumanisation in all of this is kind of insane. Also the whole babygate is so misogynistic it was super gross to listen to.
Also agree with how gross it is that men can't be close with each other without speculation. On top of that this is very amatonormative.
Also there are real queer people who have actually faced closeting, I wish people would direct their energies towards these people.
Also in the end queerness should be humanising, this is not it, these people clearly don't see their targets as human. They're essentially toys. I'm not even against shipping these too, if you want to do so go ahead. I'm all for creating queer stories but I'm very much against dehumanising people, even in the name of supposed queerness.
I feel like it's also weirdly anti queer, because if they're platonic friends, they're kind of queering platonic friendship, or at least not conforming to toxic ideas of masculinity, or avoiding being called queer for being close to other men. That friendship would be meaningfully progressive without anything gay going on, but they think there's no heterosexual explanation for men being close, which is not a progressive position.
Yeah and also it's very amatonormative i.e. any closeness and intimacy is assumed to be of romantic nature instead of just being allowed to exist. Especially when queerness is associated which completely misses that aroace people are also queer.
i think honestly it's not wrong to ship celebrities so long as you do so in private spaces. ao3, twitter, reddit, and tumblr are public spaces. performing this behavior in spaces where celebrities can see, especially talking to them about it, is harassment. the way people treat Chappell Roan and her response to it has me thinking that we really need to start considering that celebrities have a right to consent. like i've always been anti-RPF of anyone who is alive or recently deceased, or who does not consent to the RPF existing (and no, not talking about it is not consent), but the Chappell Roan situation has me even more :/ about it.
@@louc.6735 no fuck off, leave real people alone, leave the shipping for anime characters
@@mikkosaarinen3225 People think my bestie and I are dating whenever we're hanging around, even though we're not really touchy, we just seem close. We are both bi, so they're not wrong about everything, but friends can be close. They should be! Friends are just as important as partners, maybe even more so. People get so silly about types of relationships, and it's sad. I went ice skating alone last year because everyone I asked had couple zoned it as an activity. Like it can only be a date, which is ridiculous.
I think it's also partly the sexualization of anything queer, too. If it seems romantic at all, and it's gay, it MUST be sexual.
Dark Larrie using the word dark like dark matter is fucking killing meeeeeeeee I thought they were just "welcome to my twisted mind" about their shipping........
oh this video really gave me some big war flashbacks lmao. as someone who used to be a larrie (yea shame) im shocked that anyone can still believe the conspiracy past the age of 14. the main reason i stayed in the fandom back then was the community and friends i had made, as a closeted kid back then i felt safe, until i discovered fictional shipping and then i realized how insane being a larrie was. looking back as an adult i feel so bad that i contributed to the bad turn in their friendship. anyway great video as always
I wanna just stop by to appreciate Louis’s style, though…that dude is underrated; he’s got style.
bestie you will go crazy for gaylor lore. Its insane! kinda good
9:30 "It was the superbowl for people who had taste" LMAOOO I'M DEAD
about to get so many procrastinated things done!!!!!!
cannot begin to describe what a hero you are for uploading i needed this
“..desiring the desire itself” is the feeling that got me going when looking for fanfics lol
damn. the timing.
I’m weirdly proud to say I witnessed the evolution of Larry LIVE
Anyone else around for the Benedict Cumberbatch "fake PR wife" and Babygate era too? So many of this sounds familiar. I believe there were far more older people in that conspiracy than Larry but the playbook is the same
On this day of Oct 7, 2024, 4:09pm for me, never could i have forseen you dropping a video about Larry. I feel like im getting war flashbacks to 2014.
directioners and swifties (as someone being both) are the craziest fandoms I've experienced. the fact that there's a large subgroup of the fandoms dedicated on a conspiracy theory about them being gay is astounding.
The glee fandom too! Back in the day there was a subgroup who thought lea michele and diana agron were secretly dating. I don't think they were very big though, I only found out because I was already following someone on tumblr who started posting about it.
@@ghostinthecity is this where the whole diana agron - taylor swift romance rumour emerged from?
@@ana-mariacomorasu2798 I'm not sure how that started, I don't know enough about taylor or why fans think she's gay. There were glee fans speculating about lea and diana way back in 2010 or 2011 and I don't think anyone questioned taylor's sexuality until years later, so I don't know if it's same people.
1:07:49 the delivery of "who the *fuck* owned these gay bears??" is incredible
Right on time to clean my room
I am way too old to have been a Directioner (waves ancient and tattered Duranie flag) but I became fascinated by the Larry conspiracy through watching it unfold on Tumblr. This is the best, most level-headed analysis of the phenomenon I have ever seen. You thoroughly examine every aspect of who these people are, what they did and why they did it. You established that they took it too far while maintaining compassion and not being condescending toward them. Wonderful job. (I’d love to see you handle the LiveJournal-era phenomenon of “Mary Sue sporking” as well. That was another fascinating mob mentality, where people rose up en masse against other people’s fanfic.)
This was a fantastic video! When I was younger and joined the One Direction fandom, I thought it was almost "required" to become a Larry shipper as well. After watching all these videos of “proof,” I started believing in it, too-I mean, some of it definitely looked very convincing, and they were cute together. But after being in the fandom for a while and getting older, I realized that “Larries” probably did nothing but destroy a very genuine friendship between two young men.
It’s so sad because they were (and probably still are) so convinced they were “fighting for them” and that they were the only ones who could “see the real them.” No matter if they ever dated or not, what Larry shippers did was invasive, creepy, and dehumanizing for so many people. I really hope Harry and Louis’s friendship, at least away from the public eye, wasn’t completely destroyed.
while i was watching this i got a text from my friend that liam payne passed...my stomach hurts fr this has me DISTRAUGHT