Despite manager Simon Cowell's reassurances that One Direction is not about to split yet and could see through 3 more albums before doing so, 1D breakup rumors still run rife on the Internet.
And now, it appears whisperings of a split has revolved around Zayn Malik and Niall Horan.
"Speculation flooded Twitter that the Irish singer had quit the record-breaking boyband after two news sites tweeted the news late on Sunday night," Daily Star said. The reports have prompted "the hashtag #reasonsniallleftonedirection to trend worldwide on Twitter."
Later, however, it was learned that the Twitter accounts of the said sites had been hacked.
"Last night, while Team Sugarscape were fast asleep in their beds, dreaming of cheese, chocolate and the odd naked boyband member - our Twitter account was hacked," Sugarscape clarified. The said hacker had tweeted the following message:
"BREAKING NEWS: Niall has left One Direction"
Meanwhile, the rest of the boys had taken to pranking Niall in the wake of the Twitter hacking rumor about him leaving the band.
"Harry thought it would be funny if he had the whole band act like Niall was out of the band and started talking to him and treating him like he was in the past tense, they ran with it all day," an insider revealed to Hollywood Life. "They were texting him to come back to the band and making joke decisions that didn't involve him. They all had a pretty fun laugh about it. They aren't breaking up and they wanted to treat the news as it was, a complete joke."
Okay, that's settled then. But what about those complaints about band life that Niall recently revealed? Inquisitr noted the singer as saying life on the road can be "lonely," and there also are the privacy issues.
"It can be quite frustrating being stuck in a hotel. I remember in Peru - I got up, went into Louis [Tomlinson's] room and said: 'Right, what we doing today?' and he goes: 'We should go shopping!' Then we looked out the window. There were 10,000 people on the street outside our hotel,'" he was quoted by the site as saying.
However, despite this, Niall still appears to remain loyal to the group.
What about Zayn? His noticeable absence in some 1D appearances has sparked concern and a slew of new rumors. Is he leaving One Direction?
"If I wasn't in this band I would look and think 'I wish I was mates with them lads,'" he confessed in an interview, as noted by UnrealityTV. "We're definitely still a bit of a gang and we have our in-jokes and band humor."
Looks like he's not leaving anytime soon either.