One Directioners came of age on social media. Now they're showing up for each other online after Liam Payne's death.

To say that One Directioners are a dedicated fandom would be putting it lightly. Their love has been unconditional, and this was made no clearer than on the internet, where the fandom thrived most. 2010 marked the beginning of a cultural phenomenon, and One Direction fans were driving it.

Suddenly, Tumblr pages, Twitter accounts and Wattpad fan fictions revolving around members Harry Styles, Zayn Malik, Niall Horan, Louis Tomlinson and Liam Payne were popping up en masse. Directioners, many of whom were coming of age at the same time as the boys themselves, were among the first of their generation to use social media to build community.

Now, in the wake of Payne’s death on Oct. 16, the fandom is coming together where it all began: online.

“Inspired by their collective fan identity, these [fans] leveraged the tools of the internet and social media to both consume and produce content related to their favorite band,” Ksenia Korobkova, a media researcher at the University of Southern California’s Norman Lear Center, told Yahoo Entertainment. “[One Direction] inspired a unique type of engagement.”

As if back in a pre-2016 era — before the quintet disbanded indefinitely — Directioners are now flocking to platforms like X and TikTok, only this time it’s to share in their grief.

“I always envisioned the eventual passing of a One Direction member to be so far in the future,” Jakeke, who would prefer not to disclose their last name, told Yahoo. “In a selfish way, I think we’re mourning more than just Liam’s passing. He played such an integral part in many of our adolescent years, and to see someone’s life cut so short reminds us of our own mortality and the impermanence of childhood.”

For fans like Jakeke, Payne’s death hits harder, not only because of the role he played in shaping their childhood, but also because of the way he helped shape their understanding of the internet as a safe space to foster connection.

“Growing up in Oklahoma as a closeted queer person of color, I joined the One Direction fandom because it gave me a sense of community that I couldn’t find for myself in real life,” they said.

“Thousands, if not millions of fans, were able to create a united identity and focus on a central cause, supporting the boys, that transcended cultures, religions, language and borders,” Arielle Lalande, who is still friends with the One Direction fans she met online over a decade ago, told Yahoo. She credits the fandom for helping inform her identity and chosen career.

“No matter what you did or who you were, your identity as a Directioner took precedence [over] anything else in the eyes of the fanbase,” she said.

The band’s meteoric rise to fame seemed to be a genuine reflection of the connections they’d fostered with fans, which occurred largely on social media.

“Both girls and queer fans, arguably, helped create internet culture as we know it today, using it to bring awareness to larger societal issues, while simultaneously bringing attention to the band,” Louie Dean Valencia, an associate professor of digital history at Texas State University who previously taught a course on “Harry Styles and the Cult of Celebrity: Identity, the Internet, and European Pop Culture,” told Yahoo. “They see their music as not just part of their youth, but also [as] a very special moment when social media was less commoditized and more reflective of their everyday lives.”

There’s also something to be said about seeing your favorite musicians before they became famous, which in this case, was on The X Factor. They weren’t always superstars. You saw, for instance, an eager, 16-year-old Liam Payne return to the stage with his then-signature side-swept hair after being eliminated two years earlier at age 14.

One Direction was essentially “voted into existence,” as Korobkova put it, by teenage viewers of the Simon Cowell-created music competition. The game plan was clear and consistent: The teens would call, text and vote online to assure the boys’ safety until the following week. Then they’d do it all over again. The weekly routine paid off big time: The boys finished in third place overall and landed a record deal with Cowell’s Syco Records soon after. According to Korobkova, One Direction helped craft this “democratic vision” of the internet.

“You could use [the internet] to vote for your favorite singer; you could use it to connect with like-minded others,” she said. “Since then, the world has had tough wake-up calls for that generation of young women, showing them social strife, division, war, the pandemic and worsening inequality and access to opportunity.”

Payne’s death seems to serve as a reminder of how things have changed.

“This is one reason why they held onto their youthful fandom with a nostalgic tint,” Korobkova added. “That’s why, to them, the ‘Who’s your favorite 1D member?’ question was never frivolous. It had roots and consequences.”