How the Founder of Lady Gaga’s Biggest Fan Site Ended Up in Prison

On Tuesday, Kirill Nguyen shared a rare personal dispatch from the @GagaDaily X account: “Sorry about the lack of updates, I was literally in prison 😭”. The profile, an outgrowth of the eminent Lady Gaga fan site Nguyen, now 32, founded nearly two decades ago, had gone dark for a year beginning in February 2024. His return was met with an overwhelmingly effusive response. He’ll downplay it, but this is the guy who wet-nursed a generation of Little Monsters starving for any scrap of Mother’s whereabouts on a vastly more siloed internet.

Nguyen was deliberately vague about the circumstances of his detainment, but speaking to Pitchfork, he revealed some of the details. In 2020, Nguyen attended a protest in Belarus, where he’d been raised and lived most of his life. The former Soviet satellite had recently catapulted Alexander Lukashenko, “ Europe’s last dictator ,” into a sixth term as president, in an election widely disputed as fraudulent. “I just came out with a flag and walked,” Nguyen says. “It was a regular protest like you guys have in America every day.” Four years later, Nguyen returned to visit his family in Belarus, where he was arrested by state police forces.

Calling in from another country (he asked to keep his exact location off the record), Nguyen’s chipper mood either belies or befits someone who spent the last two-and-a-half years of his life behind bars. Since his return, Nguyen has been busy cramming years of pent-up fandom into the span of days. He’s also been posting in his own voice more, something he once considered “unprofessional.” “Please excuse me if I act like it’s my first time experiencing the MAYHEM era because it literally is,” Nguyen wrote in one X post . In another : “Someone just told me that Gaga held a fan conference and spoke about ARTPOP 2, Frankenstein, and Azealia Banks 😂 Do you guys think I’m stupid 😂😂😂.” And needless to say, he’s already back on the clock .

Kirill Nguyen: On one hand, we all like when people say nice things to us, especially after living through two hard years. But also, I’m very aware that I’m not a celebrity, I’m not even an influencer. I just happen to run this page. It’s funny because I’ve had posts go viral with millions of views and likes, but it was always about Gaga. This time, it’s about me. I’ve never experienced anything like this before.

I was 14, 15 when I first saw Gaga performing “Just Dance” on YouTube. I was really into making websites, and there was no social media back then; I mean, there was Twitter, but it was not like it is right now. So I just thought, What would be a good name for a fan site? I made the website in, like, a day, and then [Gaga] blew up, and I watched the website hit first 100 views a day, then a thousand, then like a million.

Did people know that it was a 14-year-old running this page?

Back then, If you visited the website, you would think there was a team running it. If I posted something, I wouldn’t say “I,” I would say “we.” You know, I’m using somebody’s name for my platform. People are not following it for me; people follow it for Gaga.

As someone who’s been at this for almost two decades, how has the culture of fan websites and fan accounts shifted over time?

It’s changed so much. I would say up until 2016, fan sites updated people on the artist. So if you’re a Lady Gaga fan, you would go to gagadaily.com just to see if she has a new song, or what outfit she wore, maybe new interviews. Then stan culture became more focused on charts and comparing who’s better and who has, like, a better Pitchfork score.

In your return post on X, you said, “it feels surreal that so many people who don’t know each other, whose only connection is something as silly as loving the same pop star, can form such a strong bond that lasts for so many years.” I think that’s a beautiful sentiment, and maybe at odds with the shape of contemporary pop fandom. At the same time, I feel like Gaga Daily doesn’t buy into that. You’re not fighting in the stan wars.

I definitely try not to. I mean, all these fans of Ariana Grande, or Dua Lipa, or all these newer pop stars, they’re in their teens, maybe early 20s. Gaga fans, some of us are in our 30s, so it’s just so silly to be on the internet comparing who sold more records.

In the replies underneath that post, you talked about being in prison and hearing “Abracadabra” for the first time on the radio. Take me into that moment.

It’s actually so funny. In all these Slavic countries that are so homophobic, their playlists are actually like, imagine I’m in prison, I’m eating prison food, and all I’m hearing every day is “Rush” by Troye Sivan. I’m doing hard labor and I hear “Alone” by Kim Petras and Nicki Minaj.

“Abracadabra" came out in February of ’25 but it took a little bit to reach our radio. I did know that Gaga came out with a new song, and I knew the name because some of my friends told me in a letter. Then it came on one day and I knew immediately; I recognized the voice, recognized the beat. I’m not going to romanticize this too much because I had other things to worry about, but wow , I was shook. It came to me that, for the first time in maybe 20 years, I was hearing a song without hearing any snippets, without knowing what people thought about it.

You mentioned having a couple of friends, Christian and Anthony, who ran the Gaga Daily accounts in your stead, from February 2025 until your release. How were you able to communicate with them?

When I was arrested, I was the only person with access to the accounts. As time went by, I did manage to get a note to my best friend through my lawyer. Christian, who lives in the United States, he’s been a fan since probably even before me, and when the Mayhem era started happening, he was like, “We have to do something.” So he asked me if it would be okay for him to run the account, and I respect him a lot, so I said yes.

The day that you got out, was that before or after the news broke that Gaga was a mom?

Yes, I think it was, like, 4 a.m. my time. I’d just gotten up to pee and then I saw the news. I’m just really happy for her like everybody else.

Is there any part of you that wishes Gaga would speak out more on what is going on in Belarus?

No, I have no wishes about what Gaga should or should not speak about. I cannot stress this enough. As a fan, what I care about, what I have opinions on, is what the next record is going to sound like. What I hope for is that it comes out sooner than later.