Loser Gets Kissed on the Mouth

Larries

When I land in New Jersey, its actually pretty close to time to get to the venue. My hotel is right next to the airport so I decide walk. I check in quickly and leave my bag on the bed.

My security guard is meeting me here to bring me to the venue so there isn't much for me to do but wait. I'm sure that I didn't see everything that the Larry world has to offer, but during my flight I feel like I've covered a lot of ground.

I'm seriously in awe of what I've seen...I can't make complete sense of it all. I get that the consensus is that they were closeted by management when they were first starting, that they signed contracts that mean they probably can never come out.

From a business standpoint, that makes sense. You're not going to take off if two fifths of your boy band appears unattainable to their target audience.

From a human standpoint, that is an insane amount of pressure to put on a 16 and 18 year old kid. The weight of the success of their entire band relies upon them keeping this secret.

I do also think that it was a protective move to keep their relationship from the public. 2010 doesn't feel like that long ago, but even then it was a different time. There is definitely always discussion of keeping your private life separate from work in media training.

Still, how could they have been expected to make that kind of a choice at that age? And fully understand what that choice means for the rest of their careers? They couldn't possibly.

Some of the clips are actually heartbreakingly sad. You can really see a sudden change in the way the two interact with each other early on compared to just a year or two in. It's obvious they were told to tone it down, possibly even threatened.

Imagine everyone constantly telling you they love you all of the time, that the world has one perception of who you are, and if you don't meet that expectation, they wont love you anymore.

And as if that wasn't bad enough, that loss of love is also going to negatively affect the people you're working closely with.

Imagine being a teenager trying to figure yourself out in the public eye, during a time when technology and social media are taking off at a rapid rate, and the adults who are supposed to be looking out for you don't fully understand what's happening and aren't even able to fathom the long-term consequences.

Every move you make, every awkward thing you ever do or say, now lives somewhere forever. I suddenly have so much empathy for all of these guys.

I can't wrap my head around how difficult those years must have been for them. I'm struggling to balance this new life of being famous as a 28 year old grown fucking man, if this had all happened to me when I was a teenager, I wouldn't have been able to handle it.

They make you think with smoke and mirrors that these guys had it all. I don't envy them for a second, it must have been so much pressure.

I start to understand that this fandom is genuinely well-intentioned. Sure, there are absolutely problematic aspects to it, but thats the case with just about everything these days.

My heart suddenly swells with emotion at how sweet the idea is. All of these people have been following this for well over a decade. They've made it a point to say to their management that they're not buying what they're selling.

They're saying we can see with our own eyes that these guys aren't who you're trying to portray them as.

This entire fanbase kicked their heels into the dirt and didn't budge from their beliefs. Their primary goal is to negate what their management conditioned the boys to believe.