As anyone who has even glanced at X over the past few years can attest, the social media platform has become a bottomless cesspool of misinformation, misogyny, spam, scams, bot-generated hate campaigns, absurd conspiracy theories, and bilious rage. And in a new post on X, One Direction‘s Louis Tomlinson says he’s simply had enough.
“The last few months have made it impossible to be on here,” he wrote. “All the conspiracy chat about my relationship, my son or even stretching sometimes to opinions on my Mum. It’s just too much and too hurtful for me to see! Thank you to everyone who always has my back!”
Tomlinson didn’t get more specific, but his mother, Johannah Deakin, died of leukemia in 2016, and his sister, Félicité Tomlinson, died from an accidental overdose in 2019. He also broke up with stylist Briana Jungwirth, the mother of his 8-year-old son Freddie Reign Tomlinson, in 2020.
The post didn’t mention the death of Tomlinson’s One Direction bandmate Liam Payne in October 2024, but that’s quite likely weighing heavily on him as well. The day after Payne died, Tomlinson poured out his grief in an open letter to his departed friend. “I feel beyond lucky to have had you in my life but I’m really struggling with the idea of saying goodbye,” he wrote. “I’m so grateful that we got even closer since the band, speaking on the phone for hours , reminiscing about all the thousands of amazing memories we had together is a luxury I thought I’d have with you for life. I would have loved to share the stage with you again but it wasn’t to be.”
It’s been three years since the release of his last album, Faith in the Future, but Tomlinson has remained busy on the road. His most recent show took place on July 11 in Zurich, Switzerland. The set was heavy on songs from his two solo albums, but he did dip back into the One Direction catalog and pull out “Drag Me Down,” “Night Changes,” and “Where Do Broken Hearts Go.”
His next show takes place July 26 at the mBank Summer Festival in Lodz, Poland, where he’ll share the bill with Shaggy, Cool Kids of Death, Kult, and London Grammar. There’s no solid word on when he plans to release his next album, but let’s hope he doesn’t eventually feel pressured to return to X to promote it. Like all of us, he’s much better off simply abandoning that thing. Life is too short to spend time absorbing hate from strangers.
