The Screaming Fangirls Who Forged the Internet

Everything I Need I Get From You: How Fangirls Created the Internet as We Know It by Kaitlyn Tiffany is an engaging look into One Direction’s online fame, the fangirls who propelled them to the top, and a wider exploration into the phenomenon of fandom—beautifully punctuated with autobiographical details from the author. It’s a must-read for anyone interested in understanding stan culture, the many shapes it takes in the present, and how it’s molded today’s internet.

On December 12, 2010 the musical act One Direction was eliminated from the seventh season of The X Factor. The UK-based reality talent show had brought together five individual contestants—Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan, Harry Styles, Liam Payne and Zayn Malik—blending them into a single dreamy boy band, an idea credited to Simon Cowell. The actual winner of that season is hardly a household name—if you Google him, the top related question reads, “Where is Matt McArdle now?” One Direction, of course, went on to become one of the biggest bands in history, breaking beyond their British and Irish roots to worldwide appeal.

Their debut single is one you’ve heard just by being conscious—“What Makes You Beautiful” was certified quadruple platinum in the US and reached number one across various worldwide music charts. Though the band has been on indefinite hiatus since 2016, One Direction holds the record of the first band in American chart history to have their first four albums debut at number one. The craze around them has drawn comparisons to Beatlemania. In a YouTube video of the boy band's elimination from the show, the top comment reads “One Direction. The Band who lost the X-factor but won the world.”

In her book, Everything I Need I Get From You: How Fangirls Created the Internet as We Know It, author Kaitlyn Tiffany—a staff writer at The Atlantic covering internet culture and technology—describes One Direction as the “first internet boy band.” She chronicles the history of how “fangirls” across the internet propelled them from reality TV runner-ups to one of the most popular bands of all time. It was fangirls who made One Direction into the “biggest subculture on Tumblr” and a constant trending topic on Twitter. It was fangirls who created and proliferated memes and fanfiction—some “deep fried” and deranged—about the band across the internet, adding to the band’s lore and popularity. It was fangirls who filled the boys’ sold-out stadium and arena concerts across the world, hand-painted signs with declarations of love hoisted in the air, screaming lyrics and names and confessions and just screaming—occasionally until their lungs collapsed. 

Tiffany writes the book from the vantage point of an ethnographer immersed in the world of fandom herself, both observer and participant. She’s a self-admitted fangirl, specifically a “Directioner” like the subjects of her study in this book. Her interest in the band was piqued after watching the One Direction documentary This is Us. She owns a “Mrs. Horan” sweatshirt. She’s screamed from the stands. The title of the book comes from her favorite 1D number, “I Want to Write You a Song”: “Ooh, everything I need I get from you, ooh, and giving back is all I wanna do, ooh.”