Deniz

a r t

I’ve decided to compile and document how this whole thing developed for posterity because I think it’s incredible and so fun and so inventive and I absolutely LOVE Harry Styles for doing this.

On the 21st of November, a Twitter user called Austin posted the first tweet of his viral thread about Eroda. Due to the picture limit, I won’t be posting all the thread but here’s the beginning:

When Austin got to the account, VisitEroda, he found that it only had eight followers, it wasn’t following anyone and it had only tweeted eight times (it had started the day before, 20 November). The account also had little to no information about this Eroda place.

He went on the website listed in the account’s bio, www.visiteroda.com, to get more information and found next to nothing. It didn’t even say where the island was located. When he did reverse image search of the photos in the website, he found that they were stock photos of various places around the world.

His first thought was that it might be a scam to sell plane tickets and booking accommodations, but he couldn’t find any links to buy anything. All the links within the page redirected back to its home. The website also had no actual ads, so it was making no revenue from its clicks.

He quickly dismissed the idea of someone making it to practise or for fun because the page was being actively promoted not only on Twitter but also on Facebook, Instagram, Spotify and with static ads on random websites and news articles. The ads were not only in English but also in Spanish, Portuguese, German and Italian. Running ads like that is expensive (for a regular person, but pocket money for a corporation), so it had to be someone with resources and it had to have a purpose. Other people started noticing the ads as well, so quickly they started suspecting they’d stumbled upon an ARG (alternate reality game).

Tech savvy people got involved and combed through the website’s coding and registration. They didn’t find anything interesting other than the fact that the domain was registered in October 2019 but it claimed copyright from 2004.

The ads kept on running. The thread got more and more attention. More and more people started getting involved. Eventually, a Reddit subreddit was created to discuss Eroda and 1,500 people registered in less than 24 hours. They also created a Discord server.

Every word in the website was analysed. Theories were created. There were links to World Of Warcraft and speculation on upcoming movies and video games. The biggest theory was that it was an ARG. People quickly realised that there was a Facebook page, an Instagram account (active since the 13th November) and a YouTube channel also linked to Eroda. The YouTube channel posted a video on the 23rd of November:

This YouTube ad started to run as well before videos.

Then, Austin got contacted by someone over Twitter DMs that suggested there were a lot of connections to... Harry Styles.

The connections were convincing enough to raise eyebrows but vague enough for gamers to dismiss them. One of the attractions, The Fisherman’s Pub, was in the corner of Cherry Street and Golden Way. Cherry and Golden were the names of two songs in Harry’s upcoming album (Fine Line, preorder on iTunes). A lot of the locations in Eroda looked suspiciously like St Abbs, the town in Scotland where Harry had recorded a still unreleased music video back in August. There was a note in the website about how the “island’s youth” expressed themselves with bold hairstyles and some of the extras in the pictures of the video shoot had wild and strange hairdos. Some of the stock photos were from Norway and Denmark and Harry bad cryptically answered “I’m going to Oslo, or Copenhaghen? I don’t know,” in a few interviews. The most compelling connection? “Eroda” would be “Adore” backwards. One of Harry’s upcoming tracks was called “Adore You”.

Gamers insisted it was nothing and that there were more connections to other theories. They said something along the lines of “Harry Styles would never do something quite this inventive and interesting,” and “it would be a waste because of his demographic.”

Then, a social media marketing coordinator called Ryan got a Facebook ad for Eroda and decided to check the “Why am I seeing this ad” section. The result? “Because you visited HStyles.co.uk, Harry’s official website. (The photo is blurry because it’s a zoomed in screenshot from a video, sorry).

As someone who understands of social media marketing, Ryan explained that the only way that could happen was if someone with access to the coding in Harry’s website had added a Facebook pixel redirecting its visitors to Eroda ads. This meant that either Harry was involved, someone from his team was targeting his fandom for a related project, or his website had been hacked.

With this information, tech savvy people compared the coding and registration of visiteroda.com and HStyles.co.uk and found that both websites had been registered under the company MarkMonitor, which is often used by big brands for identity protection. Also, the Google Ads IDs of both of these websites were identical, and Google Ads IDs are unique per client and given by Google. There was one big circumstancial piece of evidence (MarkMonitor) and two concrete ones (Facebook pixel and Google IDs). Did gamers give up? Hahaha, no! It was a coincidence, a red herring. They were using Harries for attention but it wasn’t actually about him. It was some other Columbia Records artist (one that didn’t have a young girl dominated audience maybe?), or Columbia Pictures, or ANYTHING else. Basically, “Here’s how it can still not be about an ex boybander.”

A big ARG YouTuber picked up on Eroda before the Harry connections (he very quickly admitted defeat). It got published in several big gaming/tech blogs. The attention just kept growing and growing and tons of media articles were written about it. By the 25th of November, there were five thousand people between Reddit and Discord paying super close attention to every detail. The Twitter thread had gathered over 45,000 likes, most of them by non-fans.

Over the course of the week, changes happened to the page. Attractions got added with links that led nowhere. The word “peculiar” was added to most of the descriptions. Then the entire website went down for a few hours and the message “Something peculiar has happened!” appeared. Then the website came back with no changes. A scrolling banner appeared at the top with an alert about migrating fish (jewel-coat, from North Africa). The Twitter account kept tweeting random stuff. The Instagram account kept posting as well. Nothing made sense and everything seemed pointless.

When someone made Eroda merch and started promoting it, Eroda’s Twitter account was quick to quote them on a tweet saying only to buy merch in their official store. They did not have one (but prevented people from being scammed).

The 26th, Eroda’s Twitter account posted this:

And some Harries found the exact Barnes & Noble in NYC where the pic was taken.

The next day, there was a listening party in Paris and Harry attended it. Fans asked him about Eroda and he said he had no idea what they were talking about. Reports varied. “He smirked”, “he smiled” and “he looked confused, so maybe he wasn’t lying.” (The bitch was lying.)

Then, a Twitter account by the name of “Lastsume001” sent a private message to a fan. In the message they attached pictures of the brochure Eroda had tweeted about, apparently found in the wild:

The story behind it was weird. Apparently she found it, picked it up, took pictures, then threw it away. The account was new, created in November, and only had a handful of tweets all about Eroda or Harry’s album.

The 28th, more pictures from Harry filming his music video in St Abbs back in August mysteriously popped up.

The 29th, an account under the username “CherryStreet94” who also had only a handful of tweets about Eroda and Harry’s album and who had also been created only in November, sent another DM to another fan. This time it was a video taken apparently in a cinema. The video was cut off at the beginning and end. Harry was in it – a weird voiceover narrated. Beams came out of either his eyes or mouth and set an umbrella on fire. He screamed into a mason jar. He put on a weird helmet. Ominous music in the background. The setting looked suspiciously like St Abbs (or Eroda). In one of the clips, he’s sitting on a bench overlooking the horizon. The same bench could be found in a photo on Eroda’s website:

Then, fifteen minutes after the video surfaced, Eroda tweeted about their movie theatre:

The gamers had lost – Eroda was about Harry Styles.

The fan that got sent the video noticed something peculiar: the accounts that had sent the brochures and trailer were actually the same. They had only switched names and profile pictures. The location of its tweets was Kinlochbervie, a tiny town in Scotland that doesn’t actually have a cinema. Utter confusion and chaos.

Eroda’s Twitter started to interact GALORE. It quoted dozens of fans replying to the same questions over and over. “Yes, you can bring your pet snake/cat/dog/snail” (they got excited with pet sloths for some reason). The weather is cloudy. Perpetually. Or often. Which I guess are now synonymous? Eroda is peculiar. Also cloudy. Also peculiar. “What kind of fish are there in Eroda?” someone asked. “Fish” Eroda Harrily replied. Don’t mention the pig in the pub. Only wear one gold earring. Did I mention peculiar and cloudy? This went on for an hour. Both Eroda and #VisitEroda trended worldwide (#VisitEroda at #1), also in the UK, US, Australia, etc. For some reason even “Edora” was trending (“Lights Out” energy). Eroda’s Twitter account reached and passed 50,000 followers. The YouTube video surpassed 1,000,000 views.

Some gamers were mad. Others were pumped. A lot of them checked out Harry’s music (and loved it).

Eventually, the storm passed. Everyone was waiting for something to happen at 8.30 PM EST because of the cinema tweet from Eroda but nothing did. We all collectively went to bed. Today (30 November) we woke to mayhem.

A second Twitter account, also created in November, also no tweets, posted another video that looked taken in the same cinema as Harry’s the day before. It was also cut off and taken at the same weird angle. It was about Eroda. Someone mentions a pig in the pub and gets slapped. The voiceover for both videos was eerily similar.

Here are both videos (combined into one, because Tumblr won’t let me post them separately). The actual order is probably the Eroda one first and Harry’s second, but I respected the order they came out in:

The second account was “GuccciBabyHoney” and its location was also Kinlochbervie CherryStreet94 hilariously retweeted it. (CherryStreet94 also hilariously tweeted itself @ VisitEroda the night before: “Go to sleep Harry.” I swear I don’t know if I love him or hate him.)

Here are the queens of plants:

Excellent usage of a profile picture by GuccciBabyHoney and bio by CherryStreet94. Props for the memes @ Jeff @ Harry.

Turns out, though there isn’t a cinema in Kinlochbervie, there was a mobile cinema passing by and they did screen Harry’s trailer:

Minutes after the video, more chaos. Posters with art that looked like Harry (wearing the outfit from the pictures that surfaced this week of him filming in St Abbs) and surrounded by fish that looked exactly the same as the Eroda one surfaced in NYC. He’s posing like the Virgin Mary. At the bottom: “ADORE YOU. COMING DEC 6.” The Columbia Records logo below it. Hits Daily Double posted them and confirmed their veracity.

Eroda • Adore You

The VisitEroda Twitter got busy replying again today. “What language is spoken in Eroda?” someone asked. “Yes,” Eroda Harrily replied. The story is still unfolding. Next week is gonna be incredible!

Through it all, Harry has been absolutely silent on social media. Since the whole Eroda thing blew up he was only seen in Berlin and Paris for two listening parties. Fans remembered a clip from his interview with Zane Lowe last week where he says that going into his second album he knew there were bits of the process of putting it out he didn’t enjoy (presumably promo), so this time around he wanted to find ways to make the process fun. Have to give it to him, he absolutely accomplished that.

And this is the story of how Harry Styles created a fake island to release the main single off his second album.

Adore You coming Dec 6

I’ve decided to compile and document how this whole thing developed for posterity because I think it’s incredible and so fun and so inventive and I absolutely LOVE Harry Styles for doing this.

On the 21st of November, a Twitter user called Austin posted the first tweet of his viral thread about Eroda. Due to the picture limit, I won’t be posting all the thread but here’s the beginning:

When Austin got to the account, VisitEroda, he found that it only had eight followers, it wasn’t following anyone and it had only tweeted eight times (it had started the day before, 20 November). The account also had little to no information about this Eroda place.

He went on the website listed in the account’s bio, www.visiteroda.com, to get more information and found next to nothing. It didn’t even say where the island was located. When he did reverse image search of the photos in the website, he found that they were stock photos of various places around the world.

His first thought was that it might be a scam to sell plane tickets and booking accommodations, but he couldn’t find any links to buy anything. All the links within the page redirected back to its home. The website also had no actual ads, so it was making no revenue from its clicks.

He quickly dismissed the idea of someone making it to practise or for fun because the page was being actively promoted not only on Twitter but also on Facebook, Instagram, Spotify and with static ads on random websites and news articles. The ads were not only in English but also in Spanish, Portuguese, German and Italian. Running ads like that is expensive (for a regular person, but pocket money for a corporation), so it had to be someone with resources and it had to have a purpose. Other people started noticing the ads as well, so quickly they started suspecting they’d stumbled upon an ARG (alternate reality game).

Tech savvy people got involved and combed through the website’s coding and registration. They didn’t find anything interesting other than the fact that the domain was registered in October 2019 but it claimed copyright from 2004.

The ads kept on running. The thread got more and more attention. More and more people started getting involved. Eventually, a Reddit subreddit was created to discuss Eroda and 1,500 people registered in less than 24 hours. They also created a Discord server.

Every word in the website was analysed. Theories were created. There were links to World Of Warcraft and speculation on upcoming movies and video games. The biggest theory was that it was an ARG. People quickly realised that there was a Facebook page, an Instagram account (active since the 13th November) and a YouTube channel also linked to Eroda. The YouTube channel posted a video on the 23rd of November:

This YouTube ad started to run as well before videos.

Then, Austin got contacted by someone over Twitter DMs that suggested there were a lot of connections to... Harry Styles.

The connections were convincing enough to raise eyebrows but vague enough for gamers to dismiss them. One of the attractions, The Fisherman’s Pub, was in the corner of Cherry Street and Golden Way. Cherry and Golden were the names of two songs in Harry’s upcoming album (Fine Line, preorder on iTunes). A lot of the locations in Eroda looked suspiciously like St Abbs, the town in Scotland where Harry had recorded a still unreleased music video back in August. There was a note in the website about how the “island’s youth” expressed themselves with bold hairstyles and some of the extras in the pictures of the video shoot had wild and strange hairdos. Some of the stock photos were from Norway and Denmark and Harry bad cryptically answered “I’m going to Oslo, or Copenhaghen? I don’t know,” in a few interviews. The most compelling connection? “Eroda” would be “Adore” backwards. One of Harry’s upcoming tracks was called “Adore You”.

Gamers insisted it was nothing and that there were more connections to other theories. They said something along the lines of “Harry Styles would never do something quite this inventive and interesting,” and “it would be a waste because of his demographic.”

Then, a social media marketing coordinator called Ryan got a Facebook ad for Eroda and decided to check the “Why am I seeing this ad” section. The result? “Because you visited HStyles.co.uk, Harry’s official website. (The photo is blurry because it’s a zoomed in screenshot from a video, sorry).

As someone who understands of social media marketing, Ryan explained that the only way that could happen was if someone with access to the coding in Harry’s website had added a Facebook pixel redirecting its visitors to Eroda ads. This meant that either Harry was involved, someone from his team was targeting his fandom for a related project, or his website had been hacked.

With this information, tech savvy people compared the coding and registration of visiteroda.com and HStyles.co.uk and found that both websites had been registered under the company MarkMonitor, which is often used by big brands for identity protection. Also, the Google Ads IDs of both of these websites were identical, and Google Ads IDs are unique per client and given by Google. There was one big circumstancial piece of evidence (MarkMonitor) and two concrete ones (Facebook pixel and Google IDs). Did gamers give up? Hahaha, no! It was a coincidence, a red herring. They were using Harries for attention but it wasn’t actually about him. It was some other Columbia Records artist (one that didn’t have a young girl dominated audience maybe?), or Columbia Pictures, or ANYTHING else. Basically, “Here’s how it can still not be about an ex boybander.”

A big ARG YouTuber picked up on Eroda before the Harry connections (he very quickly admitted defeat). It got published in several big gaming/tech blogs. The attention just kept growing and growing and tons of media articles were written about it. By the 25th of November, there were five thousand people between Reddit and Discord paying super close attention to every detail. The Twitter thread had gathered over 45,000 likes, most of them by non-fans.

Over the course of the week, changes happened to the page. Attractions got added with links that led nowhere. The word “peculiar” was added to most of the descriptions. Then the entire website went down for a few hours and the message “Something peculiar has happened!” appeared. Then the website came back with no changes. A scrolling banner appeared at the top with an alert about migrating fish (jewel-coat, from North Africa). The Twitter account kept tweeting random stuff. The Instagram account kept posting as well. Nothing made sense and everything seemed pointless.

When someone made Eroda merch and started promoting it, Eroda’s Twitter account was quick to quote them on a tweet saying only to buy merch in their official store. They did not have one (but prevented people from being scammed).

The 26th, Eroda’s Twitter account posted this:

And some Harries found the exact Barnes & Noble in NYC where the pic was taken.

The next day, there was a listening party in Paris and Harry attended it. Fans asked him about Eroda and he said he had no idea what they were talking about. Reports varied. “He smirked”, “he smiled” and “he looked confused, so maybe he wasn’t lying.” (The bitch was lying.)

Then, a Twitter account by the name of “Lastsume001” sent a private message to a fan. In the message they attached pictures of the brochure Eroda had tweeted about, apparently found in the wild:

The story behind it was weird. Apparently she found it, picked it up, took pictures, then threw it away. The account was new, created in November, and only had a handful of tweets all about Eroda or Harry’s album.

The 28th, more pictures from Harry filming his music video in St Abbs back in August mysteriously popped up.

The 29th, an account under the username “CherryStreet94” who also had only a handful of tweets about Eroda and Harry’s album and who had also been created only in November, sent another DM to another fan. This time it was a video taken apparently in a cinema. The video was cut off at the beginning and end. Harry was in it – a weird voiceover narrated. Beams came out of either his eyes or mouth and set an umbrella on fire. He screamed into a mason jar. He put on a weird helmet. Ominous music in the background. The setting looked suspiciously like St Abbs (or Eroda). In one of the clips, he’s sitting on a bench overlooking the horizon. The same bench could be found in a photo on Eroda’s website:

Then, fifteen minutes after the video surfaced, Eroda tweeted about their movie theatre:

The gamers had lost – Eroda was about Harry Styles.

The fan that got sent the video noticed something peculiar: the accounts that had sent the brochures and trailer were actually the same. They had only switched names and profile pictures. The location of its tweets was Kinlochbervie, a tiny town in Scotland that doesn’t actually have a cinema. Utter confusion and chaos.

Eroda’s Twitter started to interact GALORE. It quoted dozens of fans replying to the same questions over and over. “Yes, you can bring your pet snake/cat/dog/snail” (they got excited with pet sloths for some reason). The weather is cloudy. Perpetually. Or often. Which I guess are now synonymous? Eroda is peculiar. Also cloudy. Also peculiar. “What kind of fish are there in Eroda?” someone asked. “Fish” Eroda Harrily replied. Don’t mention the pig in the pub. Only wear one gold earring. Did I mention peculiar and cloudy? This went on for an hour. Both Eroda and #VisitEroda trended worldwide (#VisitEroda at #1), also in the UK, US, Australia, etc. For some reason even “Edora” was trending (“Lights Out” energy). Eroda’s Twitter account reached and passed 50,000 followers. The YouTube video surpassed 1,000,000 views.

Some gamers were mad. Others were pumped. A lot of them checked out Harry’s music (and loved it).

Eventually, the storm passed. Everyone was waiting for something to happen at 8.30 PM EST because of the cinema tweet from Eroda but nothing did. We all collectively went to bed. Today (30 November) we woke to mayhem.

A second Twitter account, also created in November, also no tweets, posted another video that looked taken in the same cinema as Harry’s the day before. It was also cut off and taken at the same weird angle. It was about Eroda. Someone mentions a pig in the pub and gets slapped. The voiceover for both videos was eerily similar.

Here are both videos (combined into one, because Tumblr won’t let me post them separately). The actual order is probably the Eroda one first and Harry’s second, but I respected the order they came out in:

The second account was “GuccciBabyHoney” and its location was also Kinlochbervie CherryStreet94 hilariously retweeted it. (CherryStreet94 also hilariously tweeted itself @ VisitEroda the night before: “Go to sleep Harry.” I swear I don’t know if I love him or hate him.)

Here are the queens of plants:

Excellent usage of a profile picture by GuccciBabyHoney and bio by CherryStreet94. Props for the memes @ Jeff @ Harry.

Turns out, though there isn’t a cinema in Kinlochbervie, there was a mobile cinema passing by and they did screen Harry’s trailer:

Minutes after the video, more chaos. Posters with art that looked like Harry (wearing the outfit from the pictures that surfaced this week of him filming in St Abbs) and surrounded by fish that looked exactly the same as the Eroda one surfaced in NYC. He’s posing like the Virgin Mary. At the bottom: “ADORE YOU. COMING DEC 6.” The Columbia Records logo below it. Hits Daily Double posted them and confirmed their veracity.

Eroda • Adore You

The VisitEroda Twitter got busy replying again today. “What language is spoken in Eroda?” someone asked. “Yes,” Eroda Harrily replied. The story is still unfolding. Next week is gonna be incredible!

Through it all, Harry has been absolutely silent on social media. Since the whole Eroda thing blew up he was only seen in Berlin and Paris for two listening parties. Fans remembered a clip from his interview with Zane Lowe last week where he says that going into his second album he knew there were bits of the process of putting it out he didn’t enjoy (presumably promo), so this time around he wanted to find ways to make the process fun. Have to give it to him, he absolutely accomplished that.

And this is the story of how Harry Styles created a fake island to release the main single off his second album.

Adore You coming Dec 6

I’ve decided to compile and document how this whole thing developed for posterity because I think it’s incredible and so fun and so inventive and I absolutely LOVE Harry Styles for doing this.

On the 21st of November, a Twitter user called Austin posted the first tweet of his viral thread about Eroda. Due to the picture limit, I won’t be posting all the thread but here’s the beginning:

When Austin got to the account, VisitEroda, he found that it only had eight followers, it wasn’t following anyone and it had only tweeted eight times (it had started the day before, 20 November). The account also had little to no information about this Eroda place.

He went on the website listed in the account’s bio, www.visiteroda.com, to get more information and found next to nothing. It didn’t even say where the island was located. When he did reverse image search of the photos in the website, he found that they were stock photos of various places around the world.

His first thought was that it might be a scam to sell plane tickets and booking accommodations, but he couldn’t find any links to buy anything. All the links within the page redirected back to its home. The website also had no actual ads, so it was making no revenue from its clicks.

He quickly dismissed the idea of someone making it to practise or for fun because the page was being actively promoted not only on Twitter but also on Facebook, Instagram, Spotify and with static ads on random websites and news articles. The ads were not only in English but also in Spanish, Portuguese, German and Italian. Running ads like that is expensive (for a regular person, but pocket money for a corporation), so it had to be someone with resources and it had to have a purpose. Other people started noticing the ads as well, so quickly they started suspecting they’d stumbled upon an ARG (alternate reality game).

Tech savvy people got involved and combed through the website’s coding and registration. They didn’t find anything interesting other than the fact that the domain was registered in October 2019 but it claimed copyright from 2004.

The ads kept on running. The thread got more and more attention. More and more people started getting involved. Eventually, a Reddit subreddit was created to discuss Eroda and 1,500 people registered in less than 24 hours. They also created a Discord server.

Every word in the website was analysed. Theories were created. There were links to World Of Warcraft and speculation on upcoming movies and video games. The biggest theory was that it was an ARG. People quickly realised that there was a Facebook page, an Instagram account (active since the 13th November) and a YouTube channel also linked to Eroda. The YouTube channel posted a video on the 23rd of November:

This YouTube ad started to run as well before videos.

Then, Austin got contacted by someone over Twitter DMs that suggested there were a lot of connections to... Harry Styles.

The connections were convincing enough to raise eyebrows but vague enough for gamers to dismiss them. One of the attractions, The Fisherman’s Pub, was in the corner of Cherry Street and Golden Way. Cherry and Golden were the names of two songs in Harry’s upcoming album (Fine Line, preorder on iTunes). A lot of the locations in Eroda looked suspiciously like St Abbs, the town in Scotland where Harry had recorded a still unreleased music video back in August. There was a note in the website about how the “island’s youth” expressed themselves with bold hairstyles and some of the extras in the pictures of the video shoot had wild and strange hairdos. Some of the stock photos were from Norway and Denmark and Harry bad cryptically answered “I’m going to Oslo, or Copenhaghen? I don’t know,” in a few interviews. The most compelling connection? “Eroda” would be “Adore” backwards. One of Harry’s upcoming tracks was called “Adore You”.

Gamers insisted it was nothing and that there were more connections to other theories. They said something along the lines of “Harry Styles would never do something quite this inventive and interesting,” and “it would be a waste because of his demographic.”

Then, a social media marketing coordinator called Ryan got a Facebook ad for Eroda and decided to check the “Why am I seeing this ad” section. The result? “Because you visited HStyles.co.uk, Harry’s official website. (The photo is blurry because it’s a zoomed in screenshot from a video, sorry).

As someone who understands of social media marketing, Ryan explained that the only way that could happen was if someone with access to the coding in Harry’s website had added a Facebook pixel redirecting its visitors to Eroda ads. This meant that either Harry was involved, someone from his team was targeting his fandom for a related project, or his website had been hacked.

With this information, tech savvy people compared the coding and registration of visiteroda.com and HStyles.co.uk and found that both websites had been registered under the company MarkMonitor, which is often used by big brands for identity protection. Also, the Google Ads IDs of both of these websites were identical, and Google Ads IDs are unique per client and given by Google. There was one big circumstancial piece of evidence (MarkMonitor) and two concrete ones (Facebook pixel and Google IDs). Did gamers give up? Hahaha, no! It was a coincidence, a red herring. They were using Harries for attention but it wasn’t actually about him. It was some other Columbia Records artist (one that didn’t have a young girl dominated audience maybe?), or Columbia Pictures, or ANYTHING else. Basically, “Here’s how it can still not be about an ex boybander.”

A big ARG YouTuber picked up on Eroda before the Harry connections (he very quickly admitted defeat). It got published in several big gaming/tech blogs. The attention just kept growing and growing and tons of media articles were written about it. By the 25th of November, there were five thousand people between Reddit and Discord paying super close attention to every detail. The Twitter thread had gathered over 45,000 likes, most of them by non-fans.

Over the course of the week, changes happened to the page. Attractions got added with links that led nowhere. The word “peculiar” was added to most of the descriptions. Then the entire website went down for a few hours and the message “Something peculiar has happened!” appeared. Then the website came back with no changes. A scrolling banner appeared at the top with an alert about migrating fish (jewel-coat, from North Africa). The Twitter account kept tweeting random stuff. The Instagram account kept posting as well. Nothing made sense and everything seemed pointless.

When someone made Eroda merch and started promoting it, Eroda’s Twitter account was quick to quote them on a tweet saying only to buy merch in their official store. They did not have one (but prevented people from being scammed).

The 26th, Eroda’s Twitter account posted this:

And some Harries found the exact Barnes & Noble in NYC where the pic was taken.

The next day, there was a listening party in Paris and Harry attended it. Fans asked him about Eroda and he said he had no idea what they were talking about. Reports varied. “He smirked”, “he smiled” and “he looked confused, so maybe he wasn’t lying.” (The bitch was lying.)

Then, a Twitter account by the name of “Lastsume001” sent a private message to a fan. In the message they attached pictures of the brochure Eroda had tweeted about, apparently found in the wild:

The story behind it was weird. Apparently she found it, picked it up, took pictures, then threw it away. The account was new, created in November, and only had a handful of tweets all about Eroda or Harry’s album.

The 28th, more pictures from Harry filming his music video in St Abbs back in August mysteriously popped up.

The 29th, an account under the username “CherryStreet94” who also had only a handful of tweets about Eroda and Harry’s album and who had also been created only in November, sent another DM to another fan. This time it was a video taken apparently in a cinema. The video was cut off at the beginning and end. Harry was in it – a weird voiceover narrated. Beams came out of either his eyes or mouth and set an umbrella on fire. He screamed into a mason jar. He put on a weird helmet. Ominous music in the background. The setting looked suspiciously like St Abbs (or Eroda). In one of the clips, he’s sitting on a bench overlooking the horizon. The same bench could be found in a photo on Eroda’s website:

Then, fifteen minutes after the video surfaced, Eroda tweeted about their movie theatre:

The gamers had lost – Eroda was about Harry Styles.

The fan that got sent the video noticed something peculiar: the accounts that had sent the brochures and trailer were actually the same. They had only switched names and profile pictures. The location of its tweets was Kinlochbervie, a tiny town in Scotland that doesn’t actually have a cinema. Utter confusion and chaos.

Eroda’s Twitter started to interact GALORE. It quoted dozens of fans replying to the same questions over and over. “Yes, you can bring your pet snake/cat/dog/snail” (they got excited with pet sloths for some reason). The weather is cloudy. Perpetually. Or often. Which I guess are now synonymous? Eroda is peculiar. Also cloudy. Also peculiar. “What kind of fish are there in Eroda?” someone asked. “Fish” Eroda Harrily replied. Don’t mention the pig in the pub. Only wear one gold earring. Did I mention peculiar and cloudy? This went on for an hour. Both Eroda and #VisitEroda trended worldwide (#VisitEroda at #1), also in the UK, US, Australia, etc. For some reason even “Edora” was trending (“Lights Out” energy). Eroda’s Twitter account reached and passed 50,000 followers. The YouTube video surpassed 1,000,000 views.

Some gamers were mad. Others were pumped. A lot of them checked out Harry’s music (and loved it).

Eventually, the storm passed. Everyone was waiting for something to happen at 8.30 PM EST because of the cinema tweet from Eroda but nothing did. We all collectively went to bed. Today (30 November) we woke to mayhem.

A second Twitter account, also created in November, also no tweets, posted another video that looked taken in the same cinema as Harry’s the day before. It was also cut off and taken at the same weird angle. It was about Eroda. Someone mentions a pig in the pub and gets slapped. The voiceover for both videos was eerily similar.

Here are both videos (combined into one, because Tumblr won’t let me post them separately). The actual order is probably the Eroda one first and Harry’s second, but I respected the order they came out in:

The second account was “GuccciBabyHoney” and its location was also Kinlochbervie CherryStreet94 hilariously retweeted it. (CherryStreet94 also hilariously tweeted itself @ VisitEroda the night before: “Go to sleep Harry.” I swear I don’t know if I love him or hate him.)

Here are the queens of plants:

Excellent usage of a profile picture by GuccciBabyHoney and bio by CherryStreet94. Props for the memes @ Jeff @ Harry.

Turns out, though there isn’t a cinema in Kinlochbervie, there was a mobile cinema passing by and they did screen Harry’s trailer:

Minutes after the video, more chaos. Posters with art that looked like Harry (wearing the outfit from the pictures that surfaced this week of him filming in St Abbs) and surrounded by fish that looked exactly the same as the Eroda one surfaced in NYC. He’s posing like the Virgin Mary. At the bottom: “ADORE YOU. COMING DEC 6.” The Columbia Records logo below it. Hits Daily Double posted them and confirmed their veracity.

Eroda • Adore You

The VisitEroda Twitter got busy replying again today. “What language is spoken in Eroda?” someone asked. “Yes,” Eroda Harrily replied. The story is still unfolding. Next week is gonna be incredible!

Through it all, Harry has been absolutely silent on social media. Since the whole Eroda thing blew up he was only seen in Berlin and Paris for two listening parties. Fans remembered a clip from his interview with Zane Lowe last week where he says that going into his second album he knew there were bits of the process of putting it out he didn’t enjoy (presumably promo), so this time around he wanted to find ways to make the process fun. Have to give it to him, he absolutely accomplished that.

And this is the story of how Harry Styles created a fake island to release the main single off his second album.

Adore You coming Dec 6