“Journalists” and “Influencers” Ruined Liam’s Image and Cost Him Fans (And Ultimately His Life)

Every time I hear about Liam’s allegedly toxic behaviour and his bad actions, it seems like it’s either nothing, or it’s trivial and blown up from a molehill into a mountain by bad journalists or crazy stans of one of the other members. I’ve yet to see any footage where what he did was anywhere near as bad as described — even the notorious Logan Paul interview wasn’t bad, mostly he said true and illuminating things.

There seem to be two Liams floating around in people’s head space: the real person who is mostly charming, caring, thoughtful and likeable (and can be seen in hundreds of interview and concert Youtube clips), and the media-created, hallucinated monster of arrogance and douchebag cringiness, who doesn’t actually exist outside of the commentary of various spiteful, mean, vindictive, borderline psychotic “reporters” and ”content creators.” These miserable, sanctimonious, horrible, mentally deranged people invented a second Liam, distinct from the flesh and blood man, who didn’t really exist.

If he HAD existed, it would be easy to find lots of footage of him in all his abusive, arrogant, asshole glory. But no one who believes this can supply the evidence. All they can point to for proof of “train wreck Liam” is two things. One is Maya Henry’s awful novel that is a work of fiction with no plausibility (no novel where the main character is a flawless Mary Sue can ever have credibility). A piece of fiction that is also a piece of garbage artistically tells us nothing about the man.

The second “proof” is the Logan Paul interview, which when watched carefully is a very thoughtful interview where almost everything he says is factually true and paints a complex revealing picture of what 1D was. It is not the boastful, deluded picture various idiotic youtube influencers and fake reporters claimed it was. For example, when he said Strip That Down was the most successful single of all the guys in terms of streams he is correct. However, this wasn’t idle boasting, because he goes on to reflect on how he still struggles with his identity, that he still doesn’t know who he is — he wasn’t bragging about being the most successful overall, he talked about being the most successful solo artist out of the starting gate but then struggling to know what to do next. Similar pattern to X Factor, the most successful and talented of the boys by far at first (he was telling the truth about the band being built around him as the TV footage proves) but then as Harry and Zayn developed the emphasis shifted to them.

I hear a guy trying to articulate what happened in his life and trying to explain the repeat pattern of him starting out with a bang but unable to hold onto the momentum. Because that’s how it REALLY DID happen with 1D and then again with his solo career. Each time, he was the top star at first but the starlight faded out fast. I hear a man struggling to make sense of himself and his career. Do people want real content from interviews or do they just want brainless mush and publicist-crafted soundbites that say nothing and reveal nothing? Well, we know from the way Liam was crucified that the answer is the latter.