#i was looking at the nightvale website and i found out they were doing a show in the city i live next to

[sea-me-now]

just bought tickets to the welcome to night vale live show!!!

can’t wait to subject my father to all of that

[thestylesindependent]

Inside Eroda, the fictional Harry Styles island that’s baffled the internet

Full Text from The Telegraph 4/12/2019

It all started on November 20. A Twitter account opened in October released its first post: “The Isle of Eroda’s rich history is embedded in daily life as the ruins of many structures from the past remain standing across the land. #VisitEroda”

It looked like a new marketing campaign for a little-visited, off-beat beauty spot. But a quick search would show it didn’t actually exist. Yet, Eroda had a website. Advertisements for the place were popping up on Facebook and Google. People interested in all manner of nerdy subcultures were foxed – it had the whiff of a clever marketing campaign about it, but what was it for?

Within hours, an Eroda subreddit had been created to discuss it. People dived deep into web hosting details, and only became more baffled as they seemed legitimate: “it ain't no kid doing a school project”. Was it a scam, a game, an elaborate prank? Some were convinced it was the beginning of a new Cloverfield film, World of Warcraft, a new Channel 4 series or even a means of human trafficking.

Meanwhile, scores of “Harries”, the sub-group of Directioners dedicated to Harry Styles, were piecing bits of evidence together. The pop star was due to release Adore You, the second single off his forthcoming sophomore album. “Adore” backwards was “Eroda”, and the video, released on November 23, looked like it had been shot in St Abbs, the Berwickshire fishing village where Styles had been spotted shooting in August. As Eroda claimed more of the internet, Harries  – some of the most forensic fans in the world – were sent into a flurry of investigation.

The goliath churn of a pop star marketing campaign is fairly familiar by now: cryptic social media teaser, excitable release date news, lyric video, full video, rinse, repeat.

Styles, who will release sophomore album Fine Line on December 13 and Adore You on Friday, satisfied many speculating fans on Monday with a near-three-minute-long trailer for the single, along with an illustration of the star standing in the ocean, surrounded by fish.

To those who had been studying Eroda for the past 10 days it was the confirmation they had been hankering for: Eroda was a Harry Styles project, and it confirmed what they had always known – that he is an artist beyond the normal realms of pop frippery (by contrast, former bandmate Louis Tomlinson spent the same afternoon releasing a video in which he sings in a bunker wearing a Stone Island parka).

Styles’ trailer introduced Eroda, showing it to be an island in the middle of the Irish Sea “shaped unmistakably like a frown, it is home to an all-but-forgotten fishing village that has had perpetual cloud cover for as long as anyone can remember”. Scenes appear of a typical coastal village, with crashing waves and brave little houses facing them. It gets increasingly weird: we learn that it is bad luck to “mention a pig in a fisherman’s pub” and to “whistle in the wind, in case you turn a gust into a gale”; the island mustn’t be left on odd-numbered days.  

The inhabitants of Eroda’s village always frown, calling it “resting fish face”. Until, that is, a beaming baby appears amidst the gloom. Deemed “peculiar” (a word that pops up a lot), the boy – who grows up to become Harry Style – was outcast, leading him to deal with his angst by screaming into jars. “He had lost his smile, and without it, the world grew darker, the wind colder, and the ocean more violent” the pan-European narrator explains. “Loneliness is an ocean full of travellers trying to find their place in the world”, she continues, as Harry finds himself bonding with a stubborn fish, before the film ends “to be continued…”

So far, so intriguing. But delve a little deeper into Eroda and you may find yourself wanting to visit. The island’s website – beautiful island views and a template dating back to the late Noughties – looks remarkably similar to those for any other charming coastal holiday destination, say Bute or Oban. “No Land Quite Like It”, reads Eroda’s strapline, before offering a familiar-enough menu: Accommodations, Attractions, Guide, Home and About Eroda. The video is similarly convincing: “Make memories for your senses at VisitEroda.com”, a dulcet-voiced woman encourages over shots of crabmeat and speedboats.

It didn’t take long for the Harries to take over the Eroda subreddit, moderators becoming increasingly rigid in ruling nuggets of unrelated Eroda flotsam irrelevant to the cause of discovery (such as the user who wanted to discuss Eroda, but without any intervention from the Harries). Tumblr users were similarly invested: “What do the ominous references to Him portend? What are they serving at those town dinners? You think it’s a cute little coastal AU [alternative universe] but upon closer examination it’s full-on Wicker Man meets Hotel California meets Nightvale in the afterlife (which is what most of those places are anyway so sure why not),” posted 1D Discourse of the Day.

The whole thing is littered with wordplay. Eroda, for one, is Adore backwards (Harry’s next single is called Adore You). But, as Directioners have pointed out, the copy throughout the website nods to forthcoming Styles songs: The Fisherman’s Pub is located on the corner of Cherry Street and Golden Way (Cherry is one new song, Golden is another); the album will be released on Friday, 13 December and Eroda recommends avoiding a departure on an odd-numbered day. Eroda’s fishermen wear a single gold earring for good fortune – a look historically sported by Styles.

Directioners went further still: the hosting for VisitEroda.com and Styles’ website, doyouknowwhoyouare.com, were owned by the same company, MarkMonitor.inc. Social media pixels linked pages about Styles with Eroda. Fans became suspicious over Visit Eroda adverts appearing not on their social channels or YouTube, but, of all places, on Wikipedia. “I'M FROM FRICKING PORTUGAL,” a baffled Reddit user posted. “NOTHING EVER HAPPENS HERE. WHY IS THIS HERE”.

Eroda had analog presence, too. A4 pamphlets – the kind of thing one could make on MS Publisher circa 1998 – appeared in the freesheet boxes on the pavements of Manhattan. At a promo event in Paris, Harry was asked about Eroda by a fan. He remained silent, but those who were there claim he “made a face”.

By November 29, more evidence arrived. A short film “advert”, which used footage from the trailer released on Monday, was screened by a new Harry Styles fan account from “Eroda”. They said the film appeared in a cinema in Kinlochbervie, on Scotland’s northern coast; the Eroda account then started to tweet about cinema screening times.  Eagle-eyed fans were swift to post screengrabs, showing similar island formations in the background of both the Eroda advert and that featuring Styles. The two were linked.

Kinlochbervie was, fittingly, a bit of a red herring: the footage shown in both the advert and the video trailer was actually taken in St Abbs, a picturesque fishing village in Berwickshire that’s no stranger to a rolling camera – it was “twinned” with New Asgard after being used as a location for Thor’s new home in Avengers Endgame.

Styles was there in August, shooting, it appears, a few things for the forthcoming album campaign. He and his crew used Angela Morris’s cottage, in St Abbs’ Sea View Terrace, as a green room during the three days of filming in the village, after Morris had responded to a note being popped through the door from a filming company. “One Thursday I was just coming home from work and there was Harry walking into the house,” she tells me. “All of the costumes were in the living room, make-up was going on in the kitchen.

“I asked if I could wait in the garden before my husband and I went out for the evening, so I just sat there when Harry came out,” Morris said. “I think he was having a coffee, and he sat down and chatted, asked me about bits and pieces about the village. I was talking to him about his Gucci clothes and we had a bit of a laugh. I wasn’t too starstruck, really, and I think he appreciated that.” Later on in the shoot, Styles invited Morris and her husband to share a glass of champagne with him and the crew.

While the shoot interrupted the sleepy pace of life on St Abbs for a few days – Morris says that visitor numbers had already been boosted by Avengers Endgame but small crowds of teenage girls began to crop up after word spread of Harry’s location – most villagers, she reckons, are pleased to see the place put on the map: “Most people I saw were embracing it and interested to see what was going on.”

A German artist named Mario Klingemann was, however, more incensed when his holiday collided with the shoot: “I didn't know who Harry Styles was until today when I learned that he's the guy who blocked off the entire St Abbs harbour and prevented us from enjoying our fresh crab rolls," he posted on Twitter, aggrieved.

But Morris found out about Eroda much like everybody else – through Facebook. “It’s really odd,” she assess. “Lovely footage of beautiful St Abbs, though.”

Long-lens pap shots from that shoot certainly seem to match up with what we’ve seen of Eroda so far. Styles gangles around in Seventies suits, befitting the aesthetic of his trailer. The smoking gun, though, is the presence of a young woman with hair that brings to mind a Dr Seuss illustration, or the hat Princess Beatrice wore at the Cambridges’ wedding. VisitEroda’s “about” page explains: “The primary occupation in Eroda is fishing, however, the island’s art scene has recently started to develop. In particular, Erodean hairstyles have become a rather bold expression of self amongst the island’s youth”. Clearly, these are scenes of Eroda that are being filmed.

There’s an unmistakably ominous air to Eroda, and some believe the video for Adore You will see some misfortune befall Styles – there were reports of a (fake) gunshot being filmed in St Abbs while he was there.

But what happens next is arguably less intriguing than what we’ve been given with Eroda so far. We are well-used to being nudged and prodded by pop stars ahead of a new release. Major albums aren’t so much brought out as “dropped” or “leaked”, arriving online in the middle of the night before their fans disseminate them through the internet. Fans, rather than critics, are given early listens – and under tight NDAs. Artists will clear their channels to mark a new direction, only to give us elaborate photoshoots and contrived poetry to create a “concept”.

Eroda is undeniably a “concept” – themes of loneliness, peculiarity, conformity and happiness have been woven into the fictional island from the off. But it’s been artfully done; look deep enough into the Reddit forums and you’ll see non-Styles fans begrudgingly accepting that this is the work of a former boy band frontman, rather than that of a somehow more “serious” game creator, filmmaker or even musician. Furthermore, it’s fun – and that’s all too rare in a pop world where things have become obsessed with authenticity, and a rogue comment can result in “cancellation”. One Directioner popped up on a thread only to add, “As someone who works in marketing/promotion... This is fucking genius. Harry Styles' team is tops”, and it’s difficult to disagree.

After a decade in which stars have had to up their social media presence to survive, tweaking and teasing their listenership in ever-increasing desperation to retain shrinking attention spans, Styles is closing out the 2010s with the greatest album campaign we’ve seen so far. As an artistic statement, it suggests the 2020s will be his to claim.

[sanriopropaganda]

rules: answer these 85 statements and tag 20 people i was tagged by @lishyloves! thanks so much <3

THE LAST 1. drink: raspberry green tea

 2. phone call: my sister inviting me out for mexican food 

3. text message: i told my parents i was out with my sister (i live a very exciting life as you can see)

4. song you listened to: a simple and clean remix i think 

5. time you cried: couple weeks ago

6. dated someone twice: in middle school lmao

7. kissed someone and regretted it: ive never kissed anyone at all lmao 

8. been cheated on: nope 

9. lost someone special: yes :-( 

10. been depressed: i am depression 

11. gotten drunk and thrown up: no i do not drink alcohol is gross  3 FAVORITE COLORS: 12. blue 

13. black 

14. pink  IN THE LAST YEAR HAVE YOU:

15. made new friends: yep! its great 

16. fallen out of love: ive never been in love 

17. laughed until you cried: yep 

18. found out someone was talking about you: haha yeah

19. met someone who changed you: not really 

20. found out who your friends are: um 

21. kissed someone on your Facebook list: hahahahaha 

22. how many of your Facebook friends do you know in real life: all of them? 

23. do you have any pets: i have a dog! 

24. do you want to change your name: ehhh that seems like a lot of effort 

25. what did you do for your last birthday: my friends came over and then we went to see a movie 

26. what time did you wake up: today at like 5 in the morning but usually around 10:30

27. what were you doing at midnight last night: i was just getting home from a movie 

28. name something you can’t wait for: college! even though im kinda nervous 

29. when was the last time you saw your mom: couple hours ago 

31. what are you listening to right now: welcome to nightvale lmao 

32. have you ever talked to a person named tom: yeah but he went by a nickname so i didnt find out his real name was tom until like two years after i met him 

33. something that is getting on your nerves: boys 

34. most visited website: this one unfortunately 

5. hair colour: brown and red rn

36. long or short hair: rn my hair is short

37. do you have a crush on someone: i havent had a crush since like seventh grade 

38. what do you like about yourself: um 

39. piercings: my ears are pierced and i have a septum ring 

40. blood type: why is this a question 

41. nickname: wavs 

42. relationship status: single hahahahhahah 

43. zodiac: taurus 

44. pronouns: she/her

45. favourite tv show: i cant say i have one 

46. tattoos: no, i want some but my parents are very strict about body mods

47. right or left handed: right 

48. surgery: does getting my wisdom teeth out count 

50. sport: do i look like i play sports 

51. vacation: this literally isnt even a question 

52. pair of trainers: i love my nikes  MORE GENERAL

53. eating: unless gum counts, nothing 

4. drinking: nothing 

55. I’m about to: take a nap probs 

56. waiting for: lots of things 

57. want: money 

58. get married: sure 

59. career: rn im thinking something in the med field 

  WHICH IS BETTER

60. hugs or kisses: hugs 

61. lips or eyes: lips 

62. shorter or taller: taller 

63. older or younger: older people younger than me make me uncomfortable

64. nice arms or nice stomach: arms 

65. hook up or relationship: relationship i couldnt do hookups 

66. troublemaker or hesitant: im the most hesitant person i know  HAVE YOU EVER: 

67. kissed a stranger: nope 

68. drank hard liquor: nope 

69. lost glasses/contact lenses: yep :-/

70. turned someone down: yea its always hard 

71. sex on the first date: noooo 

72. broken someone’s heart: maybe (not intentionally though) 

73. had your heart broken: hahahahaha 

74. been arrested: no!!! 

75. cried when someone died: yeah :-( 

76. fallen for a friend: ehhhhhh maybe a little  DO YOU BELIEVE IN:

77. yourself: hahahahaa 

78. miracles: not really 

79. love at first sight: no 

80. santa claus: no i found out santa wasnt real ahead of my time because i could recognize my moms handwriting 

81. kiss on the first date: do whatever you want i dont care im not going on dates so 

82. angels: no 

OTHER:

84. eye colour: brown 

85. favourite movie: i dont think i have one 

i dont have 20 people to tag lmao