Talk:Rainbow Bondage Bear

latest rumor is the choreographer, don't know if there's confirmation: ONTD, [1]. also argument that the 1980s gay culture references mean RBB is run by a middle-aged dude.[2]--aethel (talk) 23:39, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Unfortunately both of the Tumblr links appear to have rotted (and have only been archived on the WBM as "URL not found" error messages), but I've added a reference to the ONTD post in Who Did It. --enchantedsleeper (talk) 20:52, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

POV issue

This sentence sounds like an exaggeration by a larrie to make anti-larries look ridiculous: " Anti-Larries believe that it is all an elaborate conspiracy spanning years designed solely to mock and make fun of Larries." I haven't looked at RBB info in years, but I thought the non-larrie explanation was the person behind the bears was doing it for fun and didn't fully grasp how much larries were reading into it (if they even knew or cared). I see I added the sentence about the idea that the crew was actively trolling larries, but I don't think that was necessarily adopted as gospel or required a conspiracy to implement--just someone with free time to dress up the bears and create the twitter account. Which we know actually happened and isn't in question: someone did this work for whatever reason, and no one has claimed ownership of the project.

Another issue with the page is that there is a section rather far down now called "Theorized Meaning", but a lot of the History section looks like a detailed description of larrie theories in chronological order. Laying out the theories in order is fine and even helpful, but the theories are not labeled clearly and it's left unstated that larries are the ones coming up with the elaborate theories reading into the meaning of the different set pieces. (For example: "members of One Direction were the only people fans really considered" is simply untrue and contradicts the Who Did It section. "members of One Direction were the only people larries really considered" is true.)--aethel (talk) 23:53, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

Also the description of why Mark was a suspect is incorrect. The citation for this theory seems to have been moved, but if you look at it, they point to the bears being photographed in the town where Mark lives. I saw a post somewhere else pointing out that the bears' gay culture references, including Freddie Mercury, were more appropriate for a 40+ sound engineer than for 20-year-old popstars. But it also could be that a while any crewmember could have come up with the idea, the tour might have been willing to cover the cost, so the insistence that the cost meant it couldn't be the crew is weird.--aethel (talk) 00:05, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

Notes and specific questions

I renamed the History section to reflect the content. Some notes as I go through it:

• there's a reference "directly after lairport" whose significance is not explained. I'm assuming the implication is that Harry and/or Louis could have brought the bear with them on the plane?
• unclear meaning: "[SBB] showed up the same day No Control and 18 were performed for the first time. On their next show on the 16th of June, 2015 the bears appeared in the same outfit. Fans theorized it was because No Control and 18 were performed for the first time so SBB’s arrival was overshadowed." SBB and RBB were wearing the same outfit as each other or wearing the same outfits two shows in a row? Also I'm assuming there's a fan theory about these details--otherwise they're not worth mentioning and sort of nonsensical. Why does it matter if SBB was "overshadowed"? Why would two new songs make people pay less attention to a bear if it was sitting in the same place for the whole show?
• why would the bears have to be "research"ed?
• did anyone speculate about a 1D member other than Harry or Louis being responsible? If not, vague references to a member of the band should be more specific. The current framing feels like a trail of breadcrumbs leading the reader to a conclusion.
• removed a sentence about Bette Davis that didn't seem relevant: "Despite losing the court battle, this sparked the most successful period of her career."
• we don't need so much detail on Judy Garland's status as a gay icon--it is already well known

--aethel (talk) 00:28, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

More notes:

• There appears to be a theory about the HCPL sticker being hand-made AND that it's from a library sale. I don't know how these two ideas connect to each other, and it's unclear to me why the sticker being handmade is significant. If it is significant.
• A lot of the material on the page was copied directly from the beccasafan RBB website without being cited or put in quote marks. beccasafan included a lot of factoids in their writeup without making it entirely clear which facts are supporting a theory (and what that theory actually entails) and which are just random background info on the props.
• For example, is this an argument that the Frank Pearson photo is a reference to Louis, or is it random background info on Frank Pearson? Frank Pearson, a popular female impersonator in the north of England, known for his caustic wit, repartee, and for being a shrewd businessman who raised money for charities. If it's just biographical information, I think we can link to the wikipedia page instead of going into detail.
• There are a lot of RBB photos on this page. Some are interesting, but there are several examples of RBB dressed as Teddy Mercury, and I'm not sure we need them all.
• There are several RBB examples enumerated here that mention weddings, and I've read enough larrie theories by now that this feels like it wants to be a larrie theory. But the theory is not actually described here, only the sequence of examples. If there is a larrie theory about RBB communicating something about weddings, it needs to be stated explicitly.

--aethel (talk) 03:06, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

November 10:

• an earlier version of this page had this throwaway line: on the same day as this photo with Josh Devine was taken.. If I had to guess what this means, it's that the chronological proximity of a photo of Josh Devine is confirmation that RBB's "warning" was related to Josh Devine. However, this would be extremely far-fetched, and the larrie proof post that mentioned it didn't say why it was important, so I'm removing it unless someone finds a source confirming what part this detail plays in the larrie theory, if any.
• I just realized that a lot of this page also relies on or copies the RBB and SBB for dummies larrie masterpost in addition to the beccasafan website I mentioned above.--aethel (talk) 01:32, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

November 17:

• There were several links to photos on someone's google website, but when I clicked the link it wanted me to login, which I didn't do. I don't think these links to a private site I couldn't evaluate are appropriate, so I will remove them. Regardless, I believe there are public copies of all these photos, so we can find a public link if needed.
• Too Much Canon. Someone pointed out to me that to the casual observer the page looks like a canon resource, so even if the history section hadn't had POV issues and had instead been a neutral recounting of events, it would have been inappropriate for Fanlore. RBB was controlled by someone on the 1D tour, not by a fan, so RBB activity is canon info and only the fan reactions and speculation are fandom info. RBB info is obscure enough that we do need to provide additional context, and I have had some luck finding larrie theories by searching for contemporary twitter reactions, but it would also be great if some details weren't needed and could be cut, because this page is so long!--aethel (talk) 15:59, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

Focus of the page

The more I work on this page, the less I understand what certain pieces of info have to do with RBB. As aethel writes above, the page reads at times like a list of all the "proof" Larries believe in, with RBB info interspersed. For example:

• "Many Larries also interpreted the song lyrics of "Home" (fairly standard love song fare) to be Larry-related: about realizing one’s sexuality (“so many nights I thought it over, told myself I kind of liked her but there was something missing in her eyes”) and finding someone who understands you (“still high with a little feeling I see the smile as it starts to creep in it was there I saw it in your eyes.”)"
• Not long after the bears tweeted, Harry tweeted, "I don't know about you but I'm feeling 22" (a reference to a Taylor Swift song.) => How does Harry tweeting this on his 22nd birthday relate to the bears?

I think either an explicit link has to be drawn, or the info needs to be moved out of the page, possibly to a page that lists Larry "proof" (I'm sure there's one!)

Finally - does the "theorized meaning" and "who did it" sections come too late? I know it seems obvious to start with the chronology, but at this point the chronology is not *just* a timeline, it's an argument that aims at proving RBB was done by Louis (& Harry) to send messages to their fans about their secret relationship. Very few opposing theories (and there are some!) are ever considered in those sections. --Greedy dancer (talk) 09:57, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

I agree that the structure of the Chronology section was extremely biased and pushing a larrie POV. It was also difficult to follow, with actual events hard to find amid all the theories, so I pulled out the basic facts of RBB and put them in a timeline section. One problem I haven't addressed is that I think most of the sources for events are larrie sources, so if the bear made other concert appearances or did anything that didn't fit larrie theories, I'm not sure we can trust that the information was included here. I think the "theorized meaning" could be renamed/adjusted to be something like "Summary of Theories". There is a general larrie theory page: Larry Is Real/Theories.--aethel (talk) 15:48, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

user:greedy_dancer, I think I fixed most of the issues on the page and connected the remaining 1D canon stuff back to RBB. (There are several citation needed tags remaining.) I also updated the theorized meaning header to "General Comments on Theories", which I'm not wild about, but seems to cover what's in that section. The later sections contain some redundant information with the chronological section, but maybe that's ok. I have run out of inspiration at the moment.--aethel (talk) 05:49, 27 November 2021 (UTC)