Our PR goofy award for today goes to… Perez Hilton, who upset fans of British-Irish boy band One Direction, after spreading rumors that Zayn Malik was leaving the group.
Image via One Direction on Facebook
In fact, things cannot be better for the band, who are even preparing for a big announcement this Thursday. One Direction announces on Facebook:
This Thursday and Friday something *massive* is going down in 1D world!! And we want to set you a 1D Challenge so you can be involved… We want you to nominate a 1D related item. What for?? All will be revealed very soon! Answer below Directioners! 1DHQ x
Obviously, this has nothing to do with Perez Hilton’s assumption that Zayn Malik plans to leave the group. In fact, the beloved One Direction star expressed no such intentions, but he did something that puzzled many fans: Zayn Malik deleted his Twitter account.
Fans reacted promptly, and begged Zyan to return to Twitter – in a matter of hours, their plea #ComeBackZayn became a worldwide trend.
And because Perez Hilton loves a good rumor, he jumped to conclusions. Zyan left Twitter because “Things aren’t looking good for One Direction…or so it seems!” The celebrity blogger also asked his site: “Is Zayn readying to part ways from the group?”
Social media backlash followed soon thereafter, with aggressive messages against Perez:
#Twitition GetPerez Hilton Deleted twitition.com/up46i— Imma Beau’s Buddy. (@myrtlebeach0) August 22, 2012
I Hate people like Perez Hilton who make up stories just to get fame. Rumor after Rumor… He needs to get a life
— Solo Vuitton(@KnownSolo) August 22, 2012
the worst things in life; crocs, plasticbieber, miranda cosgrove, bella thorne and perez hilton
— E ʟ ʟ Δ (@HazzaUniverse) August 22, 2012
The backlash followed Perez Hilton to his blog, where currently there are over 100 comments, some more aggressive than others.
Zayn Malik had over 5 million followers on Twitter (@zaynmalik)- almost as many as @onedirection. But he got frustrated over Twitter messages criticizing his relationship with Little Mix singer Perrie Edwards, in which some people suggested that the romance was fake. Perrie deleted her Twitter account this May, after receiving similar messages about her relationship with Zayn. Her boyfriend’s last tweets read:
“The reason i don’t tweet as much as i use to, is because I’m sick of all the useless opinions and hate that i get daily goodbye twitter :) My fans that have something nice to say can tweet me on the one direction account , :) x”
There’s no mention of the whole debacle via @onedirection yet, however, UK media reports extensively on the matter.
About Liliana Dumitru-Steffens
