Draft:LegitTayUpdates

LegitTayUpdates
Born	2000 (age 23–24)
Other names	Na'ama (pseudonym), N. (pseudonym), iknowplacesmp6 (second account)
Years active	December 2017-2019
Known for	Parody Taylor Swift stan account, refusal to join the Israeli Defense Force, Pro-Palestinian activism
Notable work	Be Gay, Do Crime

@LegitTayUpdates is a pseudonymous Twitter user known for operating a satirical stan account about singer Taylor Swift. In 2019, the account gained notoriety as LegitTayUpdates posted about her absences, explaining that she had been sent to prison for refusing to join the Israeli Defense Force, violating the Israeli Defense Service Law. Since her release, LegitTayUpdates became notable for her continual speaking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and promotion of organizations designed to aid Palestinians under the pseudonyms Na'ama and N.

Early Life

Na'ama grew up in the southern part of Israel to an Anglo parent. When Na'ama was six years old, her mother visited family in Tenessee and bought a copy of Taylor Swift, the first album recorded by singer Taylor Swift, and brought it back to Israel for Na'ama to listen to, thinking she would like it due to the design of the cover. Na'ama listened to it and became a fan of Swift, at first not understanding the lyrics. She attended school in Israel, where she excelled at her history classes. In December 2017, Na'ama got a Twitter account and discovered the idea of stan culture, realizing that there was a community of people were fans of Swift.

At twelve years old, Na'ama began to get taught that she would be expected to join the Israeli Defense Force, which Na'ama said was typical of Israeli youth. She grew up knowing kids who did not want to join the army, but did not question what she was taught about Israel's actions being defense, which she attributed to the trust she had in her community.

Na'ama became frustrated that Taylor Swift had fallen out of popularity, particularly due to an incident involving Kanye West. Na'ama believed that significant amount of the criticism directed toward Swift was due to misogyny and faced by several female musicians. Wanting to still be able to talk about Swift, Na'ama changed her profile picture to an image of Swift and renamed her account "Taylor Swift Updates." Primarily as a joke, she began posting satirical updates about Swift. She took care not to harm or slander Swift. She enjoyed making people laugh, so she kept making the jokes, taking further care to not be malicious and make people feel unintelligent. At another point, she posted about Swift's performance at the 2009 CMT Music Awards in which she performed a parody of her song "Love Story" alongside T-Pain. LegitTayUpdates posted in response to a leaked cast list for Cats, in which Swift had been cast, joking that Swift had changed her name legally to that of her character, Bombalurina, as well as a joke about The Late Late Show with James Corden the day before she announced her arrest.

Imprisonment and Twitter Popularity

At sixteen years old, the expected age, Na'ama began her enlistment process to join the Israeli Defense Force. Although she had already begun seeing news stories from perspectives other than Israeli via social media, she still went through the process. That summer, after turning seventeen, Na'ama attended a summer program for her school in which she met several people who were Palestinian. She learned about one person in particular who could not visit her uncle due to him living in the Gaza Strip while she lived in the West Bank. This program, along with a trip to London in which she saw newspaper reports about bombings in Gaza, led Na'ama to decide that she could not join the IDF. This decision was controversial among her friends and family, and resulted in her getting called lazy and antisemitic.

Na'ama refused to continue her enrollment, leading her to talk to a mental health officer. She was put on trial and sentenced to prison in a process that she described as not being dramatic. She was unable to prove that she was a pacifist as she had said during the process that she would punch Nazis. Prior to her arrest, Na'ama posted on LegitTayUpdates that she would be going to prison for her refusal to join the military, although she did not state in the initial Tweet which country's military.

While in prison, Na'ama wrote several notes on graph paper and gave them to her friend. She asked her friend to search through the notes and post whichever ones her friend thought were funny to LegitTayUpdates. Her friend provided her with updates about Swift and Na'ama's internet friends. One such Tweet explained that she was still in prison and jokingly asked people to stop commenting on Taylor Swift's body, noting that Swift would announce her pregnancy when she was ready.

Describing her experience in prison, Na'ama said that she was initially scared, but eventually grew bored. She said she was kept on a strict schedule of waking up at approximately 5 a.m. and getting counted multiple times per day. She also noted that she tried to avoid prisoners who were IDF soldiers arrested for military crimes. She claimed to have consumed contraband drugs on her birthday and to have slapped a guard.

After two months, Na'ama returned to LegitTayUpdates and apologized for her absence, again explaining that she had been to prison and saying that she would return to posting about Swift. When asked by another Twitter user what had led to her imprisonment, LegitTayUpdates responded more specifically, noting that she had been arrested for refusing to join the IDF. The interaction led her to received several messages of both support and hate due to her stance. She remained anonymous and did not tell most people in her personal life that she ran LegitTayUpdates. Following advice from a volunteer lawyer, she was careful not to release information about her or her imprisonment that people could use to identify her. This second Tweet caused the account to become substantially more popular, getting shared seventeen thousand times in three weeks and causing LegitTayUpdates to reach twenty thousand followers in the same amount of time. She received papers assuring her that she would not be returned to prison despite her continued refusal.

Authorship and Activism

Inspired by the ways internet movements had helped activism in the past, such as with Arab Spring, Black Lives Matter protests, and the Standing Rock Protests, Na'ama eventually agreed to interviews about her situation and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in general. She became a strong activist in the conflict, promoting donations to the Palestine Children's Relief Fund. She was interviewed by dozens of international media outlets, using her interviews as a chance to spread awareness about the conflict and share what she believes to be misrepresentations of facts by the Israeli government. She remained anonymous through the process, fearful of retaliation for her controversial stances and the potential of getting arrested again or angering the IDF. For further protection, she was selective about which organizations she accepted interviews with. According to Na'ama, she was also offered jobs, money, and tours of other countries as a result of the Twitter interaction, but worked to keep the focus of the situation on Palestine.

She continued posting about the conflict on Twitter as well, referring to Israel as an autocracy. She spoke to other young Israelis and gained confidence that they were becoming more aware of the conflict, which gave her hope. She also urged her followers to donate to the Palestine Children's Relief Fund on the Twitter account itself. Alongside these posts, she also continued posting about Taylor Swift, such as a post on April 2, 2019 analyzing a post Swift had made on Instagram a long time prior and another post that Swift intended to purchase the country Spain. She used her account to promote positive actions towards Palestine, such as Swift updating her website to allow "Palestinian Territory, Occupied" as an option in a list of countries. In further posts, called for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and further asked for donations.

She also posted in support of other issues, including Black Lives Matter and the Flint water crisis.

In May 2019, Na'ama collected the thoughts that she had written while in prison and used it to raise money for the Palestine Children's Relief Fund. The book contained both the written thoughts and annotations written by Na'ama after her release.

Influence

The immediate impact of Na'ama's tweet was evident by the amount of popularity her account and the specific had gained. She received several messages of support, including from other Israeli and Israeli-American supporters of Palestine.

Na'ama's activism and refusal to join the Israeli Defense Force brought attention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Palestinian liberation movement according to Vogue. The same article compared her influence to that of the survivors of the Parkland high school shooting who became activists and children making memes about the Green New Deal. Her story came at a time when several stories of people refusing to join the IDF were being published and becoming popular. This claim was further supported by the Institute for Palestine Studies in their Journal of Palestine Studies, which noted that her speaking out and activism led to over two thousand dollars being raised. Na'ama noted, however, that Israeli teenagers reached out to her about her experience and asked what they could do to help.

Na'ama has also expressed beliefs that celebrities should be vocal about their political beliefs due to their large platforms giving them the ability to educate people, which she says was brought on by Taylor Swift making such statements and her own interviews. She defended her nature as a Swift fan and explained that the some of the smartest people she knew were fans of her, Her actions and this comment were noted in describing her as a hero, such as by social scientist Kaitlyn Tiffany, who used her story as evidence that being a so-called fangirl did not preclude one from being an activist. The Independent reported on the incident similarly, noting that participating in stan culture did not preclude one from being socially aware.

Her posts became notable enough that the Israeli government itself became aware of them. The Mossad posted about LegitTayUpdates' popularity, implying that Na'ama was only safe to run the account because organizations like their own and the IDF. LegitTayUpdates responded that having been in a bunker and being appreciative that she was protective would not deter her, again urging people to donate to the Palestine Children's Relief Fund.

Account Deactivation

Between May and July 2019, Twitter suspended LegitTayUpdates. This led fans to continue wondering about what happened to Na'ama and hope that she was not being censored by Twitter for her Pro-Palestinian views.

In 2021, another Taylor Swift-centered Stan Twitter account claimed that Na'ama had left Israel and grew tired of Stan Twitter.

Personal Life

Aside from Taylor Swift, Na'ama is a fan of music by Fleetwood Mac, Louis Armstrong, and Kacey Musgraves. She enjoys hiking as a hobby and has a fear of chickens. She enjoyed Vine, particularly a video in which a person nearly drops their croissant. She is bisexual, and says that she has a sense of humor which includes jokes about queerness.

References

This page will be placed in the following categories if it is moved to the article namespace.

Categories:

• 2000 births
• Israeli anti-war activists
• Internet activists
• Israeli prisoners and detainees