Have You seen the above picture of singers One Direction. Well actually its not the real band – its a tribute act from Scotland that have annoyed some real One Direction fans that have taken to Twitter to aim abuse at them. Despite listing themselves as “the most authentic One Direction lookalikes, soundalikes and impersonators on the market” the Scottish five-piece have taken a fair amount of abuse from Directioners.
After they published their latest promo shot, #STOPyouarenot1D trended worldwide with fans saying One and Only Direction didn’t look or sound like the real thing. The tribute group’s manager, Scott Garvie, said that they had been getting a tweet “probably every second” since the picture went online.
“It went crazy overnight. I think it’s important to say that we are a tribute band and we don’t take ourselves too seriously. I think people online assume that we’re trying to copy them [One Direction] and to be them. As a tribute act, you have to try and emulate what they do. It’s a part of the job. If we didn’t do it, somebody else would.” Not all the tweets using #STOPyouarenot1D were negative, with some One Direction fans supporting the group.
Scott admitted that, as a tribute band to the world’s most popular boy band, scrutiny “is inevitable” but added some of the comments – which included death threats- were “quite disturbing to read. It’s quite graphic tweets giving instructions to the boys and even their families on how perhaps they should, you know it gets quite deep, kill themselves,” he said.
“The boys do understand that this is just a thing that is happening at this moment in time. They’re quite strong-minded. We are not trying to be them [One Direction], obviously. The real One Direction have not commented on One and Only Direction.