Overview

#SkinFor1D is an online hoax purported as a hashtag campaign urging fans of the British boy band One Direction to share nude photographs of themselves on Twitter in support of the band members Zayn Malik and Louis Tomlinson, following the leak of a video showing them smoking cannabis during a trip to Peru.

Background

On May 27th, 2014, The Daily Mail^[1] posted a video clip showing One Direction bandmates Zayn Malik and Louis Tomlinson smoking what appears to be a marijuana cigarette while riding a cab during their trip to Peru in April (shown below).

On the following day, the account @CaitlinPrauge was created, which promoted the hashtag #Nudefor1d along with a photograph of a nude woman.^[4] Less than 30 minutes later, @CaitlinPrauge tweeted that the new hashtag would be "#SkinFor1D" since the previous hashtag was not working.

Precursor

This hashtag prank can be seen as a direct successor to #CuttingForBieber, an online hoax and Twitter hashtag campaign launched by members of 4chan to spread a rumor that fans of Justin Bieber were cutting themselves in response to photographs of the singer allegedly smoking marijuana leaked in January 2013.

Notable Developments

On Twitter

Over the course of the next hour, several newly-created Twitter accounts began posting nude photographs of young women accompanied by the hashtag #SkinFor1D.^[5][6][7][8] Other Twitter users reacted by posting tweets discouraging the hashtag.

According to the Twitter analytics site Topsy,^[2] #skinfor1d was tweeted over 110,000 times within the first 48 hours.

#WearAsManyClothesAsYouCanAtOnceFor1D

Also on May 28th, One Direction band member Liam Payne reacted by introducing the hashtags #WearAsManyClothesAsYouCanAtOnceFor1D and #wearahoodyfor1d, challenging One Direction fans to layer as many items of clothing as possible, take a picture and tweet it out. Immediately after, Payne added that fans should "keep the pg rating."

In less than 24 hours the tweet gained over 100,000 retweets and over 100,000 favorites. In less than 4 hours the hashtag #wearahoodyfor1d^[14] was tweeted out over 160,000 times and the hashtag #WearAsManyClothesAsYouCanAtOnceFor1D^[15] was tweeted out over 170,000 times.

News Media Coverage

Also on May 28th, the Daily Dot^[3] published an article about the hoax, noting that the hashtag had briefly become a worldwide trending topic. In the comings days, the Twitter prank was reported on by several pop culture news sites, including Smosh,^[9] UnrealityTV,^[10] Cambio^[11] and Perez Hilton.^[12]

Search Interest

External References