Louis Twitter Analysis: 2011
I know "analysis" can sometimes be a dirty word in this fandom, but this is what I'm about to do. If that isn't your cup of tea or if you think I'm a crazy tinhatter, that's cool. This is what I do for a living. I'm a numbers geek. Combine that with my crazy boyband obsession and we're off to the races.
I went through Louis', Harry's and Hannah's twitter accounts for 2011. Hannah's timeline only reaches back to June 1, 2011, but I think the data I've gathered is still significant.
I will be doing one for 2012 next week, and then a comparison post with lots of fun graphs soon.
Special thanks to Angela (lapelosa) for encouraging this and then taking it to the next level.
Overall Observations:
Obviously, 2 striking things here: 1) The spike at the beginning of 2011. Louis tweeted Harry or talked about him 28 times in about 16 days. 2) He tweeted Hannah twice (and never mentioned her/a girlfriend) in the first 7 months of the year, and 1 of those 2 tweets was the "always, always best friends" tweet.
An interesting thing I found was that while Louis' total tweets and his tweets to/about Harry fluctuated a bit, they were always about 10% of his total tweets/month the entire year. Compare that with Hannah.
Hannah:
September 2010-May 2011
Between September and December 2010, Hannah tweeted to/about Louis 41 times compared to Louis, who tweeted to/about her 6 times, 3 of which were in September.
Hannah tweeted Harry directly only one time. It was December 3rd, in response to the infamous "Louis' first ever cooking experience" tweet that Louis later called the "most romantic thing he's ever done." Hannah tweeted in reply to Harry "I hope nobody ate it :|"
Despite saying she got along the best with Harry, Harry never once tweeted Hannah, and Hannah only directly tweeted him one time in December 2010.
There's an interesting lack of activity in Hannah's twitter history when it comes to Louis February 12-20, 2011. February 12 was the day Harry tweeted the Bruno Mars lyrics "it's a beautiful night, we're looking for something fun to do. Hey baby, I think I wanna marry you." Louis retweeted a tweet on the 20th that said "retweet if you love Harry Styles."
Hannah's tweets always, always reminded people 1) Louis was her boyfriend 2) she loved him and 3) she knew him better than anyone else. Every. single. tweet. Louis' tweets to/about Hannah, on the other hand, hardly ever acknowledged her as a girlfriend. He hardly ever spoke romantically about her via Twitter on the X-Factor (with the exception of one tweet September 18 in which he said "I love Hannah"), and ceased entirely in January 2011 until they broke up in July.
June
Hannah tweeted to/about Louis 178 times in 30 days in June 2011. This included everything from saying when she was with him, what they were doing and where they were going to his shoe size, sleeping habits and how he likes his tea. My favorite from this month might be the time Louis said he was going to TGI Friday's and Hannah replied to a fan (who didn't really ask her) what she and Louis ate when they went to TGI Friday's together. It's hilarious.
She also made fun of Louis' cooking. Let's assume Louis made HER the romantic dinner he talked about a couple of times. If he did and she made fun of him for it on Twitter, you have to think that's a little cold and uncalled for. Therefore, I have to assume she didn't get the romantic meal and was just being a teasing friend. (Harry would NEVER make fun of Louis' meal/cooking).
Perhaps the most telling thing was when Hannah told a fan her and Louis' 1 year anniversary was March 18th. Louis didn't tweet at all that day, but imagine my shocked glee when I realized it was the day Harry retweeted "Retweet if you love Louis Tomlinson." (Louis' "RT if you love Harry Styles" tweet was March 16th). YOU CANNOT MAKE THIS STUFF UP!
She tweeted a cryptic tweet about Harry this month, too. She said an allergy medicine advertisement about "act before you react" reminded her of Harry and his hayfever. If Harry does have hayfever, then it wouldn't be weird for that ad to remind Hannah of Harry, right? So it sounds like she’s saying she doesn’t want to be reminded of Harry.
June 23rd is where Hannah's tweets abruptly turn bitter-sounding and dropped way off in frequency. Which happens to be the same day Harry replied to the wrong louis with "put me on the floor." The 24th Harry tweeted "I'm sitting opposite you on the sofa. You look sexy" to which Louis replied "I'm being seduced by your curls." And my favorite thing of all time, Harry's reply "I know. That was my plan." However, I don’t think this has anything to do with her bitter-sounding tweets. If we assume she was bearding, then she would not be offended by the open flirtations.
July
In July, Hannah implies Louis is with her in Doncaster and everything is "hunky dory" again (her phrase, not mine). She tweeted significantly less about him. 58 times in 24 days. She got bitter again around the middle of the month when Louis was home but hung out with all his “male friends” and didn’t see her. Then, on 7/17, she says she’s deleting her twitter account. She didn't tweet again until the 24th when she implied her and Louis had broken up. She retweeted one of his tweets about fan safety on August 8th and never tweeted or mentioned him again.
Fans DID ask her at one point why Louis never tweeted her and if he DMed her instead. She said no, he texted.
Harry:
There are a couple of dips in the graph for Harry, but that matches up with particularly busy times for the group, so Louis tweeted less overall.
Note: I always assumed the eggs Benedict tweet was tweeted from the Larry flat, but it was tweeted from Los Angeles when the boys were there to record for Up All Night. So I think Harry ordered Louis room service while Louis got in the shower. This is a little cuter to me for some reason.
I found it interesting that during their busiest months of the year (September, October, November) right when Elounor was beginning, Louis made it a point to tweet about Harry more consistently, openly rebelling in the only way he could.
I also love that their trend lines pretty much follow each other the entire year.
The last day he tweeted Harry in 2011 was November 22nd, the day they were watching Top Boybands in bed together. He started tweeting Eleanor in earnest November 20th.
After going through the twitter accounts (and putting together the Larry X-Factor timeline) I cannot logically accept that Hannah watched this all go down and remained a "real" girlfriend. To directly tweet your boyfriend in the volume in which she did and never receive a public acknowledgement from Louis all while Louis is, for all intents and purposes, openly flirting with and dating Harry, does not seem a logical conclusion when presented with these facts.
So what does this tell us? On the face of it, Louis pretty much appeared to not give a fuck about keeping up appearances. He literally had only 3 fucks to give in 7 months, all while he tweeted to/about Harry a total of 86 times, ranging from the overtly romantic to playful to subtlely sexual. The times Hannah implied Louis was with her that I can tell from her limited timeline (beginning of June and beginning of July), Louis went silent on twitter (and Harry was at home in Cheshire). Harry, by the way, never tweeted Hannah. Harry and Louis basically didn't participate in their own closeting and let Hannah do bulk of the work (at least on social media).
To be honest, without Harry's weird and hysterical laughter at the mention of "Hannah wants to know" only 2 weeks after the break-up (7:50), I might not be as convinced this was a bearding operation from X-Factor on. But I cannot put Harry's reaction into this narrative and not spit out that Harry was just happy to be DONE with the bearding. Otherwise, he was just a blatant dick to his best friend who was nursing a broken heart. And we all know Harry knows what a broken heart feels like.
The 2012 stuff will paint a starker picture of the commercialized closeting and product promo his relationship with Eleanor is, and hopefully reveal some additional patterns about Louis, who tweets from his Twitter account, and how much it has changed in the last year.