An open letter to One Direction fans

Dear Fellow Directioners,

 Before we start taking digs on either side, before someone accuses me of being a snooty-ass “writer” or whatever, let me just start by saying I love One Direction. A man-boy my age should be worried about having reputable street cred, but I am letting it all hang anyway. Let’s not get into the sordid mess of how I got into the whole One Direction thing. It’s a deep, dark spiral that I was fortunate to have emerged from (not unscathed though). Those days were spent trawling Oh No They Didn’t and Tumblr for news and gifs of the boys, listening to their albums in an almost religious routine, and catching the occasional Liam or Louis live stream whenever I could. I fortunately was spared from the Make-A-One-Direction-Tumblr-Blog phase, or given the work that I do, The Fan Fiction Phase.

But those days are gone now. My intense love for the band has kind of mellowed out. But that doesn’t mean I still don’t get weak in the knees watching This is Us. I still get excited when a “higher source” validates their existence, like when Sasha Frere-Jones wrote about them in The New Yorker, or each of the lads getting their own GQ UK cover, or Vogue taking notice of Harry’s Obsession sweater during their BBC concert. Or how I still remember certain moments in my life by the One Direction album released in that year (e.g. The time I moved out of my parents house? That was the year Up All Night was released) and that says something about my intense dedication to the boys.

When the news broke about the One Direction Manila concert, my initial reaction was “How much is the VIP ticket?” I mean, it’s One Direction so I’m not settling for a seat at the littlest corner of the Mall of Asia Arena. I’m a grown man, dammit! I want to see Zayn’s dirty/scruffy face up close and possibly collect some of their sweat so I could sell it on eBay. Even a sweaty towel will do. One Direction fans can get pretty extreme. But sometimes it approaches the point of ridiculousness — camping outside Mall of Asia grounds, kids crying because they didn’t get VIP tickets (I didn’t get them, too, but you don’t see me crying about it — or because I won’t let you). I think there’s a certain degree of crazy when you approach this kind of fandom. But you’re wired that way. And you don’t mind. It makes you happy and that’s what matters, right?

In the concert, I feel like I’m gonna be Paul Rudd in that One Direction Saturday Night Live skit: a forty-something dad getting sh*t-brained among pre-pubescent girls, perpetually screaming my favorite Directioner’s name, and outsmarting every one of them when it comes to everything there is to know about the boys (no, not really). To us, this concert is almost like a fellowship, a revolution that we’re all gladly taking part in. Because these are the boys that got us through some tough times; whose music kept us company when we were feeling a bit distant from everyone else. It’s that sense of connection that unleashes the crazy in us — the kind of crazy that prompts you to write a ridiculous open letter like this in a national broadsheet. Don’t let any satirical “news” blog rain on your parade, they’re all listening to sad ’70s music anyway. Let that bitter taste ruin their lives forever — because we’re all drunk on the hedonistic days of our youth (#LWWY). And yeah, this is all pure pleasure and no guilt. Just the way it should be.

All my love,

Don