we didn't leave Liam alone
How our relentless scrutiny turned Liam Payne's life into a real-life Truman Show.
I remember the day One Direction broke up. I wasn't devastated like some of my friends, but I felt a twinge of something - nostalgia, maybe, for a cultural moment I'd watched from the sidelines. I felt guilty I couldn't name all their albums or recite their tour dates. But I knew "Story of My Life" by heart, and sometimes, late at night, I'd find myself humming "What Makes You Beautiful." Now, Liam Payne is dead, and that twinge has become a deep, aching chasm. We're almost the same age, Liam and I. I was born in 1992. He was born a year later. While he was selling out stadiums, I was pulling all-nighters for exams. While he was facing screaming fans, I was fumbling through first dates. We grew up in parallel universes, and now one of those universes has collapsed. His death feels personal, an eerie reminder of our generation's vulnerability in the face of relentless public scrutiny and online cruelty.
[Disclaimer: This piece is not about speculating on the circumstances of Liam's death. Instead, it's a reflection on our culture's treatment of celebrities and the toll it takes on their mental health.]
In the months leading up to his death, Liam became the subject of intense ridicule online. Videos of him dancing at Niall Horan's concert went viral, but instead of celebration, they sparked mockery. Accusations from his ex-girlfriend fueled further public criticism. This wasn't just harmless gossip. It was a digital mob mentality that's become all too familiar in our celebrity-obsessed culture.
Liam's life morphed into our personal Truman Show1, a 24/7 spectacle we devoured with the ravenous appetite of binge-watchers on a weekend spree. But unlike the blissfully unaware Truman Burbank, Liam knew every lens was trained on him, every microphone poised to catch his whispers. His stumbles became our plot twists, his 'manic' moments our climactic scenes, his battles with sobriety our season finales - all broadcast in unforgiving high definition for our insatiable entertainment.
In July 2023, Liam's voice crackled through Instagram, a desperate plea lost in the internet void. "I've been diagnosed with a couple of conditions," he confessed. "There are a lot of manic things in my life which you guys saw." It was a moment of raw vulnerability, a glimpse into the real struggles behind the public persona. But instead of empathy, we responded with more scrutiny. We turned his pain into content, his struggle into entertainment.
This pattern isn't new. When Chris Crocker2 screamed "Leave Britney alone," his mascara-streaked face filling our YouTube screens, we laughed. We turned his raw, guttural plea into a punchline, a Halloween costume, a shorthand for hysteria. As Britney Spears' life unraveled in real-time, each paparazzi flash stripping away another layer of her humanity, Crocker saw what we refused to acknowledge - a person drowning in plain sight. We responded by pushing her head further underwater, our snickers and sneers creating a riptide of cruelty.
"Nothing I said in the video was listened to. I was mocked for my femininity," Crocker later reflected. His raw emotion became fodder for late-night comedy shows and internet memes. We didn't hear the desperation in his voice. We saw an opportunity for ridicule. The memeification of Crocker's message stripped it of its urgency, its humanity. Just as we would later reduce Liam's struggles to takedowns of his dancing and TikToks in the name of “The Downfall of Liam Payne” (several of these have since been deleted).
Fast forward to 2021, and the Framing Britney Spears documentary forced us to confront our complicity. The New York Times described Crocker's video as "a raw plea against the cruelty of public shaming." But by then, the damage was done. We had established a pattern of building celebrities up only to revel in tearing them down.
Caroline Flack's3 death in February 2020 wasn't a death - it was an indictment. Each tweet, each tabloid headline, each snide comment became a brick in the wall that eventually crushed her. We watched a wonderful woman, whose smile lit up screens across Britain, slowly crumple under the weight of our voracious appetite for scandal. Our fingers, so quick to type cutting comments, became instruments of slow-motion destruction. Her mother's words haunt the conscience of our modern internet era: "She was constantly on her phone," compulsively checking social media despite the damaging comments. Imagine watching your child scroll through a feed of hate, of judgement, of people who don't know you telling you who you are. It's enough to break anyone.
The legal case against Flack, described by her mother as a "show trial," exemplifies how we turn personal struggles into public spectacles. A coroner noted that Flack's death resulted from "an exacerbation and fluctuation of ill health" due to immense public and legal pressure. In her final Instagram post, Flack wrote, "I'm a human being at the end of the day... I'm not going to be silenced when I have a story to tell and a life to keep going with." But we silenced her. We drowned out her humanity with our hate-filled comments, our speculations, our insatiable appetite for scandal.
And I write this, we're also witnessing Chappell Roan's mental health unraveling before our eyes. After she “dared” to express a nuanced political view, namely refusing to endorse Kamala Harris, the internet, ever-hungry for black-and-white narratives, pounced on her like wolves on wounded prey. "They cannot have cis people making decisions for trans people, period," she said, frustrated by the misinterpretation of her words. But nuance doesn't get clicks. We simplify, distort, attack. We're pushing her to the brink, and for what?
This litany of names stands as an indictment of our culture, one that feeds on the pain of those we elevate to impossible heights. We feast on celebrity downfall like it's a five-star meal, each morsel of scandal savored, each tidbit of misfortune devoured with gusto. It's schadenfreude4 in its purest form - a banquet of misery where we gorge ourselves on the pain of those we once claimed to adore. We build our icons up, fingers trembling with excitement as we stack each achievement, each accolade, until they tower above us. Then, with gleeful malice, we start chipping away at the foundation.
Social media amplifies this effect, turning individual instances of schadenfreude into a collective frenzy of mockery. There's the justice junkie's hit - that righteous rush when a 'morally bankrupt' celeb gets their comeuppance. Then there's the comparer's fix - that ego boost when a seemingly perfect celebrity makes a mistake. It's the "Stars: They're Just Like Us!" page, but with more tears and fewer cute puppies. Which one are you triggered by?
But here's where it hurts – the more we consume, the less we feel. We become emotional anesthetists, numbing ourselves with a steady drip of reality TV and algorithm-curated drama. We begin to see public figures not as complex human beings, but as characters in an ongoing narrative. The more a celebrity shares of themselves, paradoxically, the less "real" they become in our eyes. They transform into commodities, their lives packaged and presented for our consumption. This creates a dangerous cycle: the more vulnerable a celebrity becomes, the more detached we become from their humanity.
This is the online disinhibition effect5 in action - a psychological phenomenon that turns mild-mannered individuals into keyboard warriors, their empathy discarded like yesterday's news. We become, in essence, an army of Christofs, each of us controlling and manipulating the narrative of celebrities' lives without consideration for the human being at the centre of our story.
In The Truman Show, Truman Burbank unknowingly lives his entire life on camera, an unwitting performer in a grand spectacle. His world, Seahaven, is a constructed reality designed for the entertainment of an unseen audience. This mirrors the way we construct narratives around celebrities, forcing them into roles and storylines of our own making.
Scholars like Dusty Lavoie argue that the film exemplifies Foucault's concept of the panopticon, where subjects under constant observation begin to police their own behaviour. Celebrities, aware of their constant scrutiny, perform versions of themselves that they think we want to see. But unlike Truman, who is blissfully unaware of his captivity, modern celebrities know they're being watched. This awareness creates a psychological prison, one from which escape seems impossible.
In the film, the audience remains emotionally detached from Truman's struggles until the very end, when his desperate attempt to escape forces them to confront his humanity. This parallels our own consumption of celebrity culture. We remain passive observers, detached from the real emotional toll of constant scrutiny. It often takes a crisis - a public breakdown, a tragic death - for us to recognise the human being behind the headlines.
We already see it in the Liam Payne discourse on social media following his death. The bits from his interviews that were once mocked are now carefully edited to show his more complicated, pondering, vulnerable version. But now, it's too late. Our brief moments of empathy, sparked by these crises, quickly fade as we move on to the next spectacle, the next controversy, the next target for our collective gaze.
Chris Crocker screamed "Leave Britney alone" but we didn't. We didn't leave Caroline Flack alone until there was no one to leave alone. We didn't leave Kate Middleton alone until we were begged not to. We're not leaving Chappell Roan alone. We're still not leaving Meghan Markle alone. We left Liam Payne alone for a while but then we didn't. No. We didn't leave Liam Payne alone.
Liam Payne's life became our personal Truman Show. We watched, we judged, we memed - all while he desperately searched for an exit sign in the painted sky of fame. But unlike Truman, Liam knew the cameras were rolling. In the final moments of the Truman Show, Truman finally reaches the edge of his world. He becomes self aware. Of both the horror and the truth. I wonder if Liam had that moment too. If he looked at us - his audience, his judges, his tormentors - and saw not adoring fans but Christofs, each of us manipulating his reality for our own amusement.
We built Liam up, concert by concert, tweet by tweet, until he towered over us - a colossus of celebrity, seemingly untouchable. And then we took immense pleasure in watching him fall. It's a tale as old as time, or at least as old as TMZ. Build 'em up, tear 'em down. Rinse, repeat, retweet.
But Liam wasn't a character in our personal Truman Show. He was the protagonist in his own life story - messy, complicated, human. And now that story's over, leaving us to face the ugly truth of our role in its tragic ending.
The credits are rolling. The screen's gone black. But the show isn't over. It never is. So what's our next move? Keep playing Christof, manipulating realities for our entertainment? Or finally realise that behind every headline, every meme, every scandal, there's a Truman just trying to find their way out?
"The Truman Show" (1998) is a film directed by Peter Weir, starring Jim Carrey as Truman Burbank, a man who discovers his entire life has been a televised simulation. The movie explores themes of reality television, privacy, and the nature of truth in media.
Chris Crocker's "Leave Britney Alone" video, posted on YouTube in 2007, became one of the earliest viral video phenomena. Initially mocked, it's now recognized as a prescient commentary on celebrity culture and media harassment.
Caroline Flack, a popular British television presenter known for hosting shows like "Love Island" and "The X Factor," died by suicide in February 2020. Her death sparked discussions about media scrutiny and online harassment of public figures.
Schadenfreude, from the German 'Schaden' (harm) and 'Freude' (joy), refers to the pleasure derived from another person's misfortune. In celebrity culture, it often manifests as a perverse delight in the downfall of public figures.
The online disinhibition effect, coined by psychologist John Suler in 2004, describes how people behave with less restraint in online interactions due to factors like anonymity and invisibility.