Hi voxina. I hope you're enjoying all the crazy larrying lately!
I was hoping to borrow your brilliant mind to confirm whether the sequence of events mentioned in this tweet is real or is it just various individual incidents cobbled together? would love anything you know about the things mentioned
https://x.com/sunflowerp08/status/2044605705240412371?s=46&t=yE6yWeMXauePQz_jS9qpzw
Hi there, love! I can well understand why this sort of post might raise some doubts and cause quite a bit of confusion, especially if no context is provided. I’ll do my best to clarify things as much as possible, although I can tell you in advance that this theory has already been debunked.
But let’s start by saying that Harry’s tweet is real, and as you can see, it’s still up. And to this day, I don’t think we’ve ever found out exactly what he was referring to.
The Titanic scene recreated by Harry and Louis is also real, and is taken from the intro to ‘One Direction – Up All Night: The Live Tour’. This particular scene was presumably filmed in 2011, so a full two years before Harry’s tweet. The clip is quite short and appears briefly on screen at around the 1:24 mark.
Now, it is with the photo of Harry’s hand on the tour bus window that things start to get tangled up and confusing because of the so-called ‘Titanic theory’.
In 2013, a fan reportedly posted this infamous photo, claiming that the tour bus had started to move and that moans could be heard coming from inside, where, according to this fan, only Harry and Louis were present.
But there has never been any way to prove that any of this was true, let alone trace the source or even the date and location where this pic was supposedly taken. In short, the full story has been lost, assuming it ever existed. And after over a decade, it is truly an almost impossible task to piece it together, given that nothing new has emerged to date. We don’t even know with absolute certainty whether it is actually Harry’s hand. Personally, I believe it is, because of Harry’s distinctive little finger, and also because of what looks like the Peace ring. But I’m fairly certain that everything else was made up and it simply became headcanon story.
The fact that the photo is somewhat funnily reminiscent of the iconic scene in Titanic with the hand on the steamy car window has helped to fuel the theory. Or, more likely, this is precisely what sparked it in the first place. Or perhaps it started out as a joke, only to gradually turn into something that some people still believe actually happened.
What most likely happened is that Harry was simply waving to fans outside. Something quite common and innocent, then. This would also seem to be confirmed by another phototaken around the same time (who knows, maybe at exactly the same moment), which is very similar to the one used in the ‘Titanic theory’.
Let’s now turn to the scratches on Louis’ back. The theory suggests that, shortly after that photo was taken, Louis was seen with those marks, which were impossible to miss. And that, as I mentioned earlier, there were only him and Harry inside the tour bus. Another version claims it happened the following day. However, the truth is quite different.
The photo of Louis that is always shared is actually cropped, and the original shows that he was in fact not alone at all.
Here is another photo from the same day, showing Louis with his former bodyguard, Alberto Álvarez.
And to be honest, that doesn’t even look like a tour bus to me, but more like a van where the boys could change their outfits. These photos, in fact, date back to 21 July 2013, when One Direction were in Houston for the photo shoot for the special issue of Fabulous magazine, which came out in August. We know this thanks to the detailed timeline that we can read in this long but very useful post.
At this point, it’s worth adding that this theory also includes the anecdote that Louis bought a DVD that day to watch with Harry, and that it was just the two of them at the service station where they stopped after their show in Houston. But, my dear anon, that would open up a whole other discussion, involving other tweets and other films lol!, though I think it’s worth mentioning briefly as it confirms the date of 21 July 2013.
Now, according to the theory, the moment when Harry couldn’t sit properly also happened that day. But we know that is not true.
The photo/gif, in fact, dates back to 9 July 2013, when the band was in Toronto for a show on their tour (the moment was captured whilst they were performing ‘Summer Love’). So, this was about twenty days before the photo was taken of Louis with the alleged scratches on his back. Not to forget that Harry’s tweet mentioning the ‘Titanic for the first time’ face was posted in December.
In conclusion, the whole theory is based entirely on assumptions; something that perhaps started as a joke; and a few actual events that took place weeks or even months apart, but which have been pieced together to suggest that there was some sort of correlation, when in reality there isn’t any at all.
I hope this has been helpful and has clarified things a bit for you, or for anyone who might still come across posts of this kind, which unfortunately do nothing but fuel misinformation within the fandom, with false evidence and fabricated theories.