from tumblr to tears: a fandom expert on how we grieve our idols

"Even though none of us actually knew Liam Payne The Person, we knew Liam Payne The Concept."

A week ago, I made a smoothie and logged onto my work laptop. I work in comms, so part of my morning routine is browsing the news. I wasn’t expecting everything to change in that moment, because how often does everything change at 8:40am on a Thursday? But suddenly, shockingly, unexpectedly, I had to grapple with the reality of a world without Liam Payne. 

I stared at the screen. I couldn’t catch my breath. I messaged all of my group chats. I started to cry. I went on Twitter, praying someone would tell me it was a hoax. My cries turned to sobs. Somehow, I messaged my work chat to tell my colleagues that I was going to be late to our morning WIP because I couldn’t stop crying and it felt like everything was falling apart. The fact that Microsoft Teams even existed in that moment felt impossible. How could my colleagues still be wishing each other a good morning when Liam Payne was gone? 

I’m thirty years old. I have a PhD, and a professional career, and a million other adult-y things, but in that moment I was the seventeen-year-old version of myself who was browsing Tumblr in September 2011, saw a picture of One Direction, googled them, and never looked back. 

An hour after I saw the news, I got a text message from the media office at my former University. I graduated a year ago, but people with degrees in celebrity fandom are few and far between so they keep me in their expert database. And while they usually get in touch when they need someone to comment on the Taylor Swift story of the day, this time they were looking for an expert on fan grief. 

I was still sobbing, but I took a deep breath and realised I had to say yes. And so in between the numbness and the tears and the group chats filled with disbelief, I’ve spent the past five days speaking to the media, offering expertise I wish wasn’t needed. 

A large part of my research focuses on parasocial relationships. If you’re reading this newsletter, I’m sure you know what a parasocial relationship is. But just in case you don’t, it’s the term used to describe the way we feel as though we know a celebrity due to repeated media exposure. Celebrities are ultimately strangers, but they give us enough glimpses into their lives that we develop very real – yet unreciprocated – connections with them. 

So even though none of us actually knew Liam Payne The Person, we knew Liam Payne The Concept. We knew the Liam Payne who tweeted things like “It’s a snake habitat, turn around!” and “I cannot get that spoon fork out of my mind”. We knew the Liam who sang our favourite songs and made us laugh and believed in the future of a band that’s now been broken up almost twice as long as they were together. 

I wanted to speak to the media because I knew there were fans out there who would be feeling confused over the amount of grief they were experiencing, that there would be fans who were wondering if it was okay to grieve full stop when there had been so many accusations in recent weeks. I knew there would be older individuals who needed reminding that the grief they were seeing from fans was just like what we saw following the deaths of John Lennon, Kurt Cobain, Princess Diana, or Kobe Bryant. That this grief was no less valid because we had once been teenage girls and he had once been in a boyband. I felt a responsibility to be a voice that told fans that it was completely normal to cry and grieve and to give themselves time and space to mourn. What’s the point in getting a PhD in celebrity fandom if I can’t occasionally put it to good use? I’m not the kind of Doctor who can prescribe things, but I can offer reassurance based on research and expertise. 

The Liam of recent years wasn’t the Liam we fell in love with. The Liam of recent years was someone who most of us distanced ourselves from. The Liam of recent years suffered at the cruel hands of addiction, a very real disease that does not excuse his alleged behaviour but should make us question the conditions of teen fame, the reality of life as a member of the world’s biggest boyband, and the lack of support that is in place for these individuals. 

If you had asked me early last week how I felt about Liam, I would have told you that I believed Maya and the other women who had shared their stories about him. That I was sad that he was suffering, and that I hoped he’d be able to get help. Because ultimately, I believed – like so many of us did – that he would have time for a redemption arc. That he would have space and time to heal and that this would be a terrible period in his life but one that he would be able to reflect back on. Horribly, Liam is far from the first celebrity to die unexpectedly while suffering from addiction but it’s never something you expect. Robbie Williams said it best in his Instagram post when he reminded us, “I still had my demons at 31. I relapsed. I was in pain. I was in pain because I relapsed. I relapsed because of a multitude of painful reasons. I remember Heath Ledger passing and thinking “I’m next”. By the grace of god and/or dumb luck, I’m still here”. It’s awful but this is now always going to be the end of Liam’s story. And it’s not fair, because he was so much more than this ending. He was a son and a father and a brother and a friend who deserved to heal, who deserved so much more than this. There should have been more time. 

I’ve now spoken to about a dozen outlets, from local radio stations across Australia, to national radio programs and news articles, to the Washington Post, NBC News and the Huffington Post. You never know who interviews like these are going to reach, but I hope that they were able to offer reassurance to someone who needed it. 

Grieving Liam is not condoning his actions. Grieving Liam is ultimately not really even grieving Liam, it’s grieving memories and moments and everything the band meant to the younger versions of ourselves. It’s grieving the teen boy that stepped onto the X Factor stage and changed not just his life, but all of ours. It’s grieving the fact it was only ever meant to be a hiatus. 

So let me leave you with some Doctor’s orders: Please let yourself feel sad. Please give yourself time to grieve. I started crying in my work cafe this morning because they played Watermelon Sugar, so please know that whatever you’re feeling and however you’re reacting, someone else is likely feeling the same. Go to a memorial if you’re feeling up to it. Reminisce with your fandom friends. Watch the old videos and laugh and cry and be grateful for what we had and what he gave us. I promise, we will find a way through the dark. Together.

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Who wrote this?

Georgia has always been a fangirl, so nobody was surprised when she decided to get her PhD in celebrity fandom studies. She's passionate about encouraging brands to value their fans, and loves to encourage students to study their passions, no matter what wider society says. A former book publicist, Georgia now works in strategic communications and freelances as a fan engagement consultant. You can usually find her drinking coffee while yelling about ice hockey, Formula 1, boy bands, or one of her many other obsessions of the week. You can learn more about Georgia's work on her website, and find more of her writing on her medium page.