#nicholas liddle

In this day and age, even real journalists are struggling with what it means to report news when facts can so easily be falsified and truth is so slippery-- how much more so your humble fandom chronicler, with no access whatsoever to the players in our stories! Fandom in general is nothing but grasping at shadows on the Walls(tm) and trying to make sense of it all without ever being allowed to see the real events, and being very aware that not only that, everyone involved in telling the stories is actively trying to mislead us, usually in multiple wildly different directions (truly unfortunate for a fandom more terrified of uncertainty than any group of people I’ve ever come across). Add in technology that makes it near impossible to discern the real from the fake and well… you start to understand the appeal of NFTs I guess! Given a truly verifiable DM screenshot someone could probably get a good bidding war going am I right?! I personally would pay good money for yall to start blockchain verifying your damn receipts (HOW sad am I that this isn’t really how NFTs work, imagine if they were actually so useful!)

Luckily, in fact things pretty much always turn out to be way simpler than fandom makes them, and usually it’s possible to get to what’s most likely the truth eventually. In this case: that Louis DMed Jedward! (In almost every other case, of course, it’s that things have been faked, screen recording or no, so this is the exception to the rule.) Anyway today saw some dramatic debunking of a DM from Louis, but then that debunking was (less dramatically) itself debunked, meaning if you’re just coming on board now you’re WINNING cause the whole middle part could be totally skipped and we are now back to the beginning and all of that can be ignored. And thank god, trying to understand it as fake when it seemed (to me) so obviously real was doing my head in (see tortured opening monologue.) So, the series of events goes like so: Jedward got up early this morning and continued to tweet about the industry and Syco and 1D, growing increasingly hysterical (“Justice is gonna be served!”, “You can’t silence the truth! Nobody can drag me down!”...uhhh that’s a lot for 6 AM damn) and then, boom, dropped a pic of a DM... from Louis!! In it he writes (the night before) “you guys have lost the plot hahahahaha you must be high”, lolll. Why would they make up him saying that, why would a faked message not be like “yeah right on” or something?! I mean, is he wrong-- what ARE they doing?? ARE they high? What is their endgame, other than getting attention to promote their new music, in talking so much about 1D and Little Mix? Louis is, as usual, asking the real questions, and more importantly, without actually giving anything away or committing to anything. Additionally I wondered if he may have wanted to sort of disrupt the narrative that he unfollowed them because he supported their message and wanted more people to see it (which you have to admit is a, uh, counter-intuitive conclusion and not remotely the most obvious way to interpret an unfollow); he may in fact wish people would shut up about his business and let him handle it himself as he sees fit, as he’s indicated many times in the past in similar situations.

Some people are enthused about Jedward’s crusade though, and happy to speak publicly about it- Nicholas Liddle chimes in about some of their points to say “from a journalist AND publicist standpoint I can confirm this”, plus “Louis Tomlinson is one of the most sweetest, genuine, unproblematic artists...take it for what you will,” and “stream Walls,” aw. Singer Lily Allen congratulates Jedward on “being iconic” and says yes, she agrees with what they’re saying.

AND there are actual OTHER THINGS GOING ON: Liam for example!! He’s got a beautiful bushy mane of lion locks and he’s tweeting about NFTs, are he and Louis twinning or what?! Liam actually let a pap get a glimpse of him though, unlike SOOOME Louis’- he was photographed in a parking garage looking like he really wished he had a jacket. According to the pap captions he was outside a TV studio in London and “gearing up for his BAFTAS performance”. Well idk about all that but I do know that he was looking good! Additionally he posted “I’ve had my eye on NFTs for a minute now and love this new piece” and goes on to promote some animated digital art featuring his old collab buddy Zedd, and to say that he’s gotten a few pieces by the artist and “can’t wait to get more!” He shares a still from one that he bought from the same people (who have been doing tour visuals for years apparently).