Are One Direction reforming as 'Reason Being'? Website glitch causes fan speculation

24 July 2020, 12:49

The moment One Direction were formed

By Katie Louise Smith

Fans are currently speculating over the mysterious 'Reason Being' glitch on the 1D website, as well as an image of an envelope shared by a Reason Being Twitter account.

Did everyone enjoy their 10 years of One Direction celebrations yesterday? Yes? What’s that? You cried all day? Well, get ready to cry some more because it’s not over yet.

Fans of the band seem to think there’s a conspiracy afoot – and it’s all to do with two words: Reason Being.

Yesterday (July 23), One Direction planned on opening a brand new anniversary website (10yearsof1D.com) to celebrate the music and accomplishments of Harry, Zayn, Louis, Niall and Liam. Due to the absolutely overwhelming demand of fans trying to get on to the site, it crashed.

READ MORE: Every single One Direction song ranked

However, eagle-eyed fans soon believed that there might be a hidden message on the site after it failed to load. Instead of the homepage, fans were shown a white screen reading: "10 Years of Reason Being"

But who are Reason Being? What is happening? Are the band reuniting under a different name (surely not!)? Let's investigate...

Are One Direction coming back as Reason Being?

The conspiracy started when fans noticed that instead of 'One Direction', the name 'Reason Being' appeared on the website's crashed homepage.

The full glitched intro message read: "10 Years of Reason Being: Celebrate 10 years of Reason Being by looking back through their journey – right from the very beginning." Fans also clocked the name attached to the new uploads of the 4K music videos on Apple Music.

Various theories soon began swirling. Are they rebranding? Is it a new song? Was it just a secret code name used by the creators of the website?

VERDICT: Well, it's definitely not fan-made, but it seems likely that it's just a glitch that occurred when the site crashed. Reason Being could also just be the code name developers used when creating the site and uploading the new 4K videos Apple Music, to keep things a secret from fans who went looking for tea.

Are One Direction releasing a new song called 'Reason Being'?

Following the mass hysteria caused by the official website, fans soon began sharing screenshots from lyric website Genius of a brand new song called 'Reason Being', which was allegedly set to be released by the band on July 28th.

However, Genius is a crowdsourced website, which means anyone can upload and edit certain things. The page has also now been removed from the site. Multiple screenshots of other 'new' songs were shared, but the links to those pages have also been removed.

VERDICT: As much as we'd love a new Harry Styles and Niall Horan writing collab, this seems pretty fake.

Is the @ReasonBeingUK Twitter account real?

The @ReasonBeingUK popped up shortly after the crashed website debacle. In the first tweet, the account shared an old image of the infamous Rainbow Bondage Bear, wearing an edited t-shirt that said 'Reason Being'.

A whole bunch of fandom specific tweets soon followed, including a reference to Liam's iconic tweet about fans standing in the middle of a snake habitat.

Some fans are speculating that the account (and similar accounts that popped up soon after) were actually set up by BTS fans in order to distract the One Direction fans.

VERDICT: Fake... right? (But with Harry's penchant for creating fake tourist destinations and setting up a full blown Twitter account for it, you can never been too sure.)

Is the One Direction envelope real?

Fans are also speculating over a picture of an envelope that was tweeted by the ReasonBeingUK account.

A simple image of an envelope, with the words 'ARCHIVED. Special issue. Closed until 2020' written on it, was tweeted alongside the caption: "Tomorrow will be a NEW day. Stay well, get some sleep, take care of yourself, all of the love always. -RB"

VERDICT: Given that the account is probably fake, this is probably fake too?

Is the ReasonBeingMusic.com website real?

Unfortunately, no. It's not. When you click the link, it now takes you to a Rickroll page.

WHAT IS HAPPENINGGGGGGG?