Kill the Boy Band

The joy you find as a teen, however frivolous and dumb, is pure and meaningful.

Because the truth is, it isn't worth loving something if you aren't going to love it all the way.

Happiness isn't always easy," he'd said. "But it's a priority.

Maybe it was obsession, but it was also happiness; an escape from the suckiness of everyday life. And when you find something that makes you happy and giddy and excited every day, us fangirls know a truth that everyone else seems to have forgotten: you hold on to that joy tenaciously, for as long as you can.

Did I love them because they were the only boys in my life who consistently told me that I was beautiful? Probably. I loved The Ruperts for who they were, sure, but I mostly loved them for how they made me feel. Which was happy. The Ruperts made me happy. The simplest thing to be in the world. And the hardest.

I was holding someone captive and all that was going through my mind was a Billboard Top 40 love song. I was going to hell.

They just want to be part of the moment. A moment that's much larger than them, and even larger than us.

They were just boys. Take away the band, the lights, the fame, and the screaming girls, and they were just boys, chosen for us to obsess over.

They didn't get the friendships that formed, the community of people who shared in your same joy.

It's alright, we just need to change the conversation, give the fans something new to talk about," said Rupert X. "We'll get new haircuts.

There was no point being a fan these days if you weren't willing to go the extra mile for your idols. It wasn't enough anymore to send them fan mail and kiss the posters above our beds. These days you weren't a true fan until you engaged in Twitter death threats and endless stan wars. The fandom landscape was peppered with land mines, and there was no other way to navigate it but to walk until you hit one. You come out the other side a little crazier, yeah, but you're also stronger. You are a true believer. You will do anything for the object of your affection.

What the fuck everlasting?!

Isabel's infamous tweets ranged from the cartoonish and impossible: Im going to pull ur tongue out of ur mouth wrap it around ur neck n strangle u w it so hard ur eyes will pop out. i will pee in the sockets. To the quaint: Get ur fcking hands off him bitch i will cut u. #RupertLIsMine To the cryptically disturbing: I watch u in your sleep. I would never condone Isabel's scary tweets, but you had to give the girl credit for managing to stay under 140 characters every time.

Boy band fangirls are a species that are more focused, determined and powerful in large numbers than just about any other group of people I can think of

The band was formed on the reality show So You Think the British Don’t Have Talent?,

Carrie Underwood, take the wheel-I was not okay.

The thing about me-the reason Erin can shoot me the wink-and-double-thumbs-up combo-is that I'm your typical good girl. I dress nicely, but I wouldn't say I'm at the bleeding edge of fashion. I always have my homework done on time. I say please and thank you and adults like me. Because of all these things, everyone always assumes that I'll do the right thing. No one ever thinks I would lie. But I do....

Fans,” he sighed. A bad word when he said it. “Fans,” I repeated, serious. “You girls …” Are never taken seriously. “… should find a nice hobby.” But

What you don’t even realize now—what you will only come to understand in time, but lucky for you, I’m here to tell you—is you’re not going to give two shits about this band in a few years. In fact, I guarantee that this group that you admire so much and that you are putting all of your love and dedication and devotion into will be nothing more than an obsession you will be immensely embarrassed of having had. One day you’ll be in college, maybe you’ll be at a party, and someone will say, ‘Hey, do you remember The Ruperts? How shitty was their music?’ and you will have a moment of crisis: Do you admit your former love for them, or do you concede, because you know in your heart that this person is right? And guess what you’ll say? You’ll say, ‘Yeah, their music was utter. Putrid.Garbage.

Sometimes fans needed to be caged, for the good of everyone.

The Ruperts made me happy. The simplest thing to be in the world. And the hardest.

Would you look at that," [Erin[ said. "It's amazing how much better this song sounds without a fucking juggling break in the middle of it.

Anyone have a pen and paper?" There was a moment of stillness as the four of us looked around, totally clueless. The only things any of us ever wrote with were our phones. And there was no way this was going to be a vote via group text.

Because the truth is, it isn’t worth loving something if you aren’t going to love it all the way.

Their names may have been the same, but as they liked to reiterate in interviews, the Ruperts had their own distinct personalities. Rupert P.’s likes and passions began and ended with juggling. Rupert X. was the pretty boy/rebel. Rupert L. couldn’t tell time. And Rupert K. was … well, he was a life ruiner. Rupert K. was beautiful. He had ruddy cheeks, but the cute kind that looked like he’d always just come from running a marathon out in the cold. He’d had braces when he was twelve, so his teeth were straight and perfect. He had brown hair that he liked to keep short and that he was always pushing back off his forehead, especially when he didn’t want to answer a television interviewer’s question. He loved fantasy video games, folk music, and baking thumbprint cookies with his grandma. When he smiled, sometimes he would bite the inside of his right cheek. He had a beauty mark on the nape of his neck, right where his heartbeat pulsed on his carotid artery. It was the shape of California and the size of a pinkie nail. Recently, he’d taken to wearing porkpie hats on the crown of his head, something his fans were now copying. He wore sunglasses a lot because his pale green eyes were super sensitive to the sun. He had a tiny scar beneath his lower lip that he got when he fell off the jungle gym when he was six. And he seemed to take pleasure in ruining my life with how perfect he was. Like I said. He was a life ruiner. All of the aforementioned things would’ve been enough to have me melting over him, but what really put Rupert K. into the man-of-my-wildest-dreams category was something he’d said in one of the first interviews he’d done.

Were my best friends actually my best friends? Was this what it meant to be part of a group of girlfriends? Kidnapping, murder, disposing of bodies all in a day's work? Did the fact that I was so reluctant to help make me a terrible friend?