Stan Twitter was the backbone of X. Credit: Stacey Zhu; Dado Photos, Hulahop/Shutterstock.com, SOPA Images / LightRocket / via Getty Images / Bluesky

“I met Taylor Swift because of Twitter,” Kayla, a 29-year-old financial services worker at a university in Jacksonville, Florida, told Mashable. She’s one of many fans who has spent over a decade communing over Swift on the platform. Now she’s leaving X/Twitter for Bluesky.

“I couldn’t be a part of it anymore. I didn’t want to be on a platform that uplifts right-wing propaganda and grifters and makes money for Musk. By staying on the platform, I was contributing to it,” she explained.

Stan Twitter, the community of users dedicated to constantly posting about their favorite celebrities and pop culture — of which Swifties are one of its biggest factions — has long been the backbone of the platform. And while fans are still active on X (a Financial Times report estimates the platform to have 251 million global daily active users as of the second quarter of 2024), growth has reportedly been stagnant since Musk acquired the company. More recently, X has been losing users in record numbers. Meanwhile, Bluesky just hit 20 million users. While that remains significantly less than those on X, it also represents a vibe shift that people seem eager to take part in. Swifties moving over may be an essential marker for Bluesky’s growth and sustainability.

Stan Twitter, in particular, took a major hit in September when X was banned in Brazil due to a feud between Musk and Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre Moraes. The ban meant that over 20 million people lost access to the app, and fan accounts dedicated to everyone from Harry Styles to Cardi B went silent. Brazilians were pivotal to the development of fan culture on the platform. A testament to their impact is the popularity of the “Come to Brazil” meme, which pokes fun at Brazilians incessantly posting the phrase in response to their faves’ tweets.

While X was reinstated in Brazil in October, after Musk surrendered to the Brazilian Supreme Court and paid millions of dollars in fines, the incident signaled that X might no longer be the best home for stan culture; after all, it couldn’t be relied on. Bluesky, which promises to be “billionaire proof” and to cultivate a welcoming environment, saw “strong growth,” according to the company, in Brazil during this period.

Swifties’ rocky relationship with X

While no fandom is a monolith, it isn’t surprising that there’s a movement among Swifties to leave X. A coalition of fans organized under Swifties for Kamala to campaign for Vice President Kamala Harris, and X and its owner have repeatedly wronged their idol. Fans dedicated to Swift’s success aren’t quick to forget those who have mistreated her.

In January, AI-generated, pornographic deepfakes of Swift went viral on X with little recourse. Swifties stepped in as protectors, flooding related tags with positive posts and images and trending #ProtectTaylorSwift on X. Meanwhile, it took days for the platform to disable search for Swift’s name.

After the pop star endorsed Harris, Musk took to X to, in the eyes of many, sexually harass Swift. He wrote, “Fine Taylor … you win … I will give you a child and guard your cats with my life.”

“After the election, my whole timeline was either people talking about being upset about the state of the world or [people posting] ‘Hey, here’s my new account, follow me over there,'” SJ, another Swiftie, told Mashable.

The 22-year-old in Rhode Island first made a Bluesky account 10 months ago, but there wasn’t much of a community there, so she posted twice and deleted the app. But since the election, she’s back on Bluesky. “I thought if everyone else is going, then there will actually be a community this time,” said SJ.

She’s hopeful about the Swiftie community on Bluesky. “It’s already better, even though it’s not been a long time. There’s more real people here. Twitter got to a point where you weren’t seeing actual community spaces there,” she said. She says she’s seen way more engagement on her posts and has almost the same following she spent seven years building on X.

But SJ will never delete her X account because she doesn’t want to lose nearly a decade of tweets and memories. “Assuming Bluesky keeps growing, and people stay active, I’ll just slowly start using Twitter less and less until I become inactive,” explained SJ.