It takes a certain type of person to commit to posting updates about a single celebrity every waking hour, but some people do it — and believe it or not, ladies and gentlemen, they largely do it for free.
In the past few years, it’s become abundantly clear that some of the admins of fan accounts have some pretty gnarly personal lives. In April 2019, the 19-year-old who runs @LegitTayUpdates casually mentioned that they went to jail because they refused to join the Israeli Defense Force, chirpily adding, “more Taylor Swift updates coming soon!”
A similar thing happened in January when an account called @feeltimemoving that inexplicably posts hourly updates of Billie Eilish’s green hair broke a months-long period of silence to share that they’d gone to prison after they, “kinda helped start a pyramid scheme. not my best moment.” The user paired the announcement with photos of Billie Eilish’s green hair, of course. You thought the post office was intense for the whole “snow nor rain” schtick? Try Twitter fan accounts.
Now, the user behind the Lady Gaga stan account @gaganotify posted on Thursday morning that they’d been “literally kidnapped (yes, no joke)” and apologized for not posting the night before. @gaganotify proceeded to nonchalantly share a photo of Lady Gaga at the New York Film Critics Choice Awards.
A few weeks ago, the same user had a similarly concerning announcement: they were taking a short break from Gaga updates after getting arrested at an anti-war protest in Moscow. The account even posted a picture from jail. It’s hard to verify any of this, but it certainly caught my attention. The hourly celeb fan accounts are in crisis!
Someone help the stan accounts —
Well, yikes. It’s practically become a meme for a celebrity fan account to share a deeply concerning life update in a bizarrely blasé tone and immediately proceed to continue their celebrity updates. On one hand, I’m concerned about these account admins — and surprisingly inspired by their commitment to their craft and apparent resilience. But I can’t help but wonder if this is turning into a growth strategy— and that fan accounts will start making up horrific but brief divulgences to sucker people like me into noticing their accounts. You know, like, “My family just died in a fire! 😞 Anyway, Harry Styles looked amazing in his Instagram Live this morning”
