Before you mock stan culture, look to the Taylor Swift fan account which proved its wokeness in one viral tweet

This week Twitter exploded over a tweet by Taylor Swift fan account @LegitTayUpdates, which said: “As most of you know, I haven’t been very active in the past couple of months because I was in prison :/ I’m back now though! more Taylor Swift updates coming soon!”

Why? A deeply passionate corner of the internet asked. The 19-year-old behind the account proceeded to splinter the consciousness of more than just her dedicated audience with her reply: “I refused to join the IDF [Israel Defence Forces) lmao.”

It’s a compelling saga. A deeply dignified, well-intentioned, absurdly hilarious one that shocks as much as it enthralls, and – deservedly – went viral. A teenager running a stan account for Taylor Swift, and dodging compulsory military conscription because she objects to the Israeli occupation in Palestine at the same time, is the sort of news a bot being force-fed culture blogs and gossip serials would write. It’s also the sort of reality which, when you get down to it, isn’t quite so surprising at all. Unpredictable, yes. But surprising? No.

Stan culture – the catch-all for a subsection of individuals that go above and beyond the regular capacity of being a fan of something or someone – is often criticised for its one-track-mindedness. Young people, so consumed by their dedication for musicians, actors, bands, authors and TV shows that they zero in on little else. Dedicated stans, loving what they love so eagerly, and sometimes with surprising moral stringency, that older generations take pride in sneering at such enthusiasm.

The misconception, in deep dives and defamatory Twitter threads, is that stans are unintelligent. They are blinkered by their infatuation; idealistic in their expectations of their faves delivering good art and good behaviour for them. Fundamentally, they’re supposed to lack the sort of complexity which makes them worth paying attention to. Liking Taylor Swift is only supposed to end with liking Taylor Swift. But the simple enthusiasm at the heart of stan culture isn’t an erasure of its opposite: criticism.

Take the hordes of stans who commented pleas for ecological awareness on Miley Cyrus’s Instagram posts for example, the majority prefacing their concerns with expressions of love and support for her career. The K-pop stans who post explanatory tweets on cultural appropriation to an audience they desperately want to understand their perspective. The dedicated viewers of diverse Netflix series On My Block who rallied for the removal of a Trump-supporting actor from their favourite show, waited for an apology they deemed insincere, and received their wish anyway.

After all, demonstrating an enthusiasm for something means seeing it in all its flawed completeness. That’s where the desire to have it improve begins. And which, like the side-effect of any and all manifestations of unconditional love, demonstrates a universal critical faculty for anything and everything.

Which isn’t to say @LegitTayUpdates’s refusal to join the IDF is overtly linked to her love of Taylor Swift, but that the qualities which make up any young and critical enthusiast of pop culture and global culture are one and the same.

They might just be misunderstood, or expressed unconventionally. Occasionally in rapid Instagram rants, or penned in stan language. Deadpan humour, irony, internet hyperbole, exaggerated punctuation.

Photographs of handwritten tweets from @LegitTayUpdates’ time in prison present a pretty concise case for that. But stan language is only derivative of all language, and what the kids are talking about is about the same as what everyone else is talking about. Only with less strictness. And often, unselfconscious dedication.

It’s pretty difficult to not be at least a little bit impressed with that – and to expect it. The kids are alright. They always have been. It’s just easier to recognise now, in our age of high-speed dialogues and virality.

And, of course, if I can borrow a phrase, to look at it all and stan.