My crazy obsession with Ziam.

I was kind of like a Jehovah’s Witness for Ziam.

(Scroll to the bottom for the audio version 😊)

When I was 12 years old, my cousin Emily showed me the music video to “What Makes You Beautiful” by One Direction in the back of my mom’s minivan. After watching me with enthusiasm, when the video ended she asked me, “So Ian … what did you think?” 

I said, “Ummm that was bad. They all look really gay … What are they called by the way?” 

“One Direction,” she replied. 

I said “Okay, can you just write down the name of the video and their name again so I can watch their other videos and see how bad they are?” In a joking tone; I was in serious denial.

Later that night I secretly searched “One Direction shirtless photos” on the family computer. I wasn’t gay, I was just curious about what their naked bodies looked like … duh. They were so dumb and gay that I actually started looking up shirtless photos of them every single day. I wasn’t as interested in their music as I was in looking at them. The next time I saw my cousin I immediately asked her to show me more of their videos. 

“Their music is so bad! But they seem cool… I guess. Can you show me interviews with them?” That night, Emily gave me a crash course in One Direction’s entire lore. At the end of the night she asked me who my favorite member was. I said, “I think Liam and Zayn.” From then on, I WAS OBSESSED.

So, I started secretly keeping up with One Direction. I needed them more than air. Every tweet, Instagram post, update - I was one of the first people to see. It quickly went from infatuation to borderline stalking. However, my obsession with One Direction was still under wraps since I was “in the closet.” Around this time, I came up with the perfect decoy plan to not let anyone know that I was gay: I became obsessed with WWE. My love for sweaty half-naked men feeling each other up definitely got everyone off my tracks.

Fast forward a year, I came out of the closet to my cousin Emily and began soft-launching my obsession with One Direction. By this point, I wasn’t just obsessed with how they looked; I knew all of their music. Their album, Midnight Memories, was about to come out and I was on the edge of my seat waiting for its release. I later met a girl at my church who loved One Direction just as much as I did, and she asked me a question that would change the course of my entire life: “Do you have a One Direction fan account?” 

“What's that?” I replied.

“Basically, you make a Twitter account but you don’t tell anyone you know in real life and you only follow other fans of One Direction.”

I had never met anyone else who liked One Direction, besides my cousin. 

Then she asked me: “Do you wanna be added to my group chat? Everyone in there is a fan of One Direction, and none of them are homophobic.” 

I was in shock. I could talk to people about the nasty dirty things I wanted to do to Zayn Malik without being judged?? 

“ADD ME RIGHT AWAY PLEASE!” And she did. That was when my teenage horniness / mental illness really kicked in… 

The day I joined the group chat, they were sending the iconic photos of Harry Styles in his yellow bathing suit and at that moment I knew: THAT WAS MY FUCKING FAMILY.

That night, I made my stan Twitter account and followed everyone from the group chat. From that point on I would log on every single day, begging the members to follow me and tweeting things like “@NIALLHORAN I LOVE YOU SO MUCH X4591 🥰” I would tweet about how much they saved my life, keyboard smashed underneath shirtless photos of them. I was tapped IN for hours on end. It was my life source. The thing that got me out of bed in the morning. If there was an option to set up a Ring™ camera in their tour bus, 14-year-old me would have been watching it 24/7. I could go on and on about how much I loved them, but that’s not what this story is about. Let's fast forward to mid-2014.

MY OBSESSION WITH FAN FICTION!

If you were a part of any fandom, you know that fan fiction is going to be brought up at some point. While scrolling on my timeline, I stumbled upon a new fan-fiction called “After.” I thought to myself, why would people read about One Direction? I like them for who they are, not some characters that a weird fan made. 

Cut to 3 weeks later; I finished “After,” parts 1 and 2. But, as a gay teenager, I was looking for more. I wanted something spicy and gay as hell. My favorite 1D members were Zayn and Liam, so I went onto Wattpad and searched “Ziam.” This is one of the biggest mistakes of my life. At first, I started reading fan fiction that was pretty tame, but quickly got bored; the storylines weren’t emotional enough. I wanted DEPTH. I wanted DRAMA. I wanted HEARTBREAK. I wanted SEX!  Soon enough, I found the stories that finally met my expectations.

This is humiliating to admit, but I became obsessed with two types of Ziam stories: eating disorders and blindness. (I’m actually looking away from the screen as I type this because WHAT THE FUCK!) I couldn’t help it! 

At the time, I genuinely didn’t know boys could even have eating disorders. The concept was taboo and new to me. In one specific story, Zayn talks incessantly about the sweet, sweet relief of a nice glass of zero calorie water, all while his boyfriend, Liam, is begging him to eat a damn burger. I began to feel the psychological effects of reading this fan fiction. I started to view Liam and Zayn as these fictional characters in real life. Every time I saw a picture of Zayn, I would think about the stories I was reading and immediately have to remind myself that they weren’t real and he wasn’t actually struggling with an eating disorder, and more importantly, but sadly, Liam wasn’t rocking his shit every night. But again, my teenage brain was impressionable and because I wasn’t familiar with the concept of eating disorders, it gave me a silly little idea… “Since Zayn in the story has an eating disorder, what if I stopped eating?! I could be hot and skinny like Zayn! Maybe a British boy in real life would wanna date me!” (Looking back, it’s kinda sad how desperate I was for someone to date me.) So, I decided that it would be time to pick up some of the habits I read about in my fan fiction. For over a month, I would wake up, go into my kitchen, pour a huge glass of water and say, “my zero calorie treat!”, quoting Zayn from my fan fiction. I’m honestly surprised how quickly I committed to this, I even related my own ED symptoms to Zayn’s. 

Thankfully, after reading my eating disorder fan fiction, I quickly moved on to a different type of Ziam fan fiction. These were the stories where Zayn or Liam were “suffering” from being blind. After reading a couple chapters of “Blind Love,” I had a new realization: “I don’t need to have an eating disorder and starve myself, I just need to find a gay blind person to date me, that way he won’t even care about how I look!”

Who knew the cure for eating disorders was blindness? It didn’t take long for me to start eating again. But, this started a new, even more humiliating obsession: BLIND GAY MEN! I was on the hunt and no one was gonna stop me. Every night I would search “Blind Gay Men in Hamden Connecticut.” I was on chat rooms, Kik, and even made a NEW secret Twitter account that was specifically made for finding a blind gay man. Soon enough, I found my very own blind sweetheart on Kik. We talked every night. I was certain I had finally found my blind King until I sent him a selfie and he said “Did you just shower? your hair looks wet!” I realized that if he could see the selfie, he wasn’t blind. I was disappointed, but still searching for my blind king… 

Fan fiction was the beginning of my Ziam obsession, and I honestly wish I applied myself more because who knows what amazing classic American Literature I could have written. BUT, I did log into my old Wattpad account and found this unfinished gem:

Now that I’ve gone over my fan-fiction era of this story, let's get back to Twitter. My time on One Direction stan Twitter was an overall positive experience, except for the constant fights I would get in with a specific group of people in the fandom: LARRIES. I thought they were the most ridiculous, unserious, despicable group on the internet. “How could they be so stupid?”, I would think to myself. Shipping two members of a group was really weird to me, and just because guys are affectionate with each other doesn’t mean they’re gay! It just means they are comfortable in their sexuality. I was constantly irritated by them. In my head there was no possible way that Harry and Louis were dating; it was just a bunch of ridiculous speculation and out-of-context clips. I was better than them because I could consume Ziam content without actually thinking that they were in a relationship. But soon all of that would change.

During this time, my algorithm on every social media platform was catered to One Direction content, and because of this, I would get suggested videos about the members. One night, Youtube suggested a video to me: “The Story Of Ziam- Part 1 Timeline Analysis and Proof.” As I was watching, I was CRACKING UP; I thought it was hysterical. Once the 22-minute-long video was over, I quickly clicked on part two, and then part three, and before I knew it the sun was coming up and I had finished 6 parts of this series.

It explained EVERYTHING! The girlfriends, Zayn's engagement, and more. After that night, my obsession with Ziam became much more than fan fiction; in my eyes they were end-game, my dream, everything I wanted in life. The day after watching the series I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t let my friends know that I actually believed that Zayn and Liam were dating, and honestly, none of them could have convinced me that they weren’t. So I made a NEW NEW fan account on Twitter, and started my own Ziam Instagram page. (At this point my account to hunt for blind men was deleted.) Between the fan-fictions of Zayn having an eating disorder, Liam being comforted by Zayn because his classmates called him names for being blind, and my newfound evidence that they were dating IN REAL LIFE. I didn’t know what to do with myself. If my original obsession with One Direction was concerning, this called for a 51-50 IMMEDIATELY.

THE ZIAM CULT!

My commitment to Ziam couldn’t be stopped. I had my new accounts, but the people who believed in their relationship were limited, and I was struggling to find community with other believers. I NEEDED everyone to know about Zayn and Liam's very real relationship, and it was time for me to do something DRASTIC to let people know. So, I essentially started a Ziam cult. I was kind of like a Jehovah’s Witness for Ziam. I would DM hundreds of fan pages every single day, copy and pasting a message along the lines of, “Hey! I see you’re a big fan of One Direction, but what if I told you 2 of the members were dating? Zayn and Liam are in a committed, loving, relationship and I have all the evidence to prove it here! *insert link to the 6 part series*” Most of these people would respond with “fuck off” or “im blocking you weirdo.” But sometimes … it actually worked. I was creating a cult of Ziam fans day by day; we even had a groupchat on Twitter dedicated to spreading the good news of their love. In this chat I was the leader, and as the leader, I had rules for anyone that wanted to be in my groupchat:

1. You must message 10 fan accounts a day explaining to them that Ziam was real (using a prewritten script).

2. You are NOT allowed to talk about Zayn and Perrie under ANY circumstances.

3. You are NOT allowed to talk about Liam and Sophie.

4. Manips are welcome, but do not make any that have you in them.

5. We will be reading "Eat" and going over a chapter every 3 days.

My rules were simple, and I was a fearless leader, but the group chat didn’t last long. Apparently inspiring 14-year-olds to spam DM other people was too big of an ask. They also refused to be a part of my very sacred Ziam eating disorder fan fiction book club. A bunch of pussies, in my opinion. No one was as serious as me, and with my cult quickly crumbling, I deactivated my Ziam accounts and fled to the one place that was crazy enough to accept me: Tumblr.

I followed accounts on Tumblr that can only be described as the Ziam version of Q-anon. One account in particular claimed to have an inside source on their relationship, and I believed every word they posted. If they told me that Zayn and Liam would have sex on stage, I would be on my phone anxiously awaiting the videos of them doing it to be released. Some might say I was in spiritual psychosis, some might call me insane, but god forbid a gay kid believes in something? After many failed predictions and fights with other users, I deleted my Tumblr and went back to my original fan account. I was sad, alone, but still had hope … I would often come home from church and relate my experience as a Ziam believer to the Book of Revelation in the Bible. I was fleeing in the woods, just like in the Book of Revelation, WAITING for Ziam to finally tell their fans the truth about their relationship. This all led up to the worst day of my life:

ZAYN LEAVING ONE DIRECTION.

I genuinely thought my parents were gonna have to take me to the hospital. I couldn’t eat, sleep, or do anything for over a week after he left. But, in all of this sadness, I found a post on a Ziam forum that made me realize the bigger picture”

“Zayn didn’t leave One Direction, He was kicked out by Simon Cowell because he was finally going to go public about dating Liam.”

“OH MY GOD! IT ALL MAKES SENSE!” I screamed! 

(I was still in denial. Like girl - what the fuck is wrong with you? LET IT GO! But I couldn’t, I wouldn’t, and it only got worse.) So, I reactivated my Tumblr and waited alone in the shadows for Ziam to finally reveal themselves. But: it never happened. And after Liam had his baby I had no fight left in me. I had finally given up, and so, I deactivated for what felt like the 100th time and accepted my defeat.

Looking back on it I realize how insane I actually was, but look, I was a loser homeschooler who was gay and just needed a hobby, and Ziam was the perfect hyper-fixation I needed. I want to say that Ziam is about the friends we made along the way, but I actually made more enemies than friends because of it. But anyway, Ziam will always hold a special place in my heart <3