On 4/20 (eyeroll), Elon Musk removed every “verified” Twitter user’s blue check mark except the dumbasses paying the $8 a month for Twitter Blue. Almost every celebrity refused to pay the $8, and several celebrities and organizations even made statements about how they wouldn’t pay or how they were removing their accounts from Twitter. Musk unverified everyone from Roger Federer to Pope Francis to Joe Biden. And… people laughed. It was so stupid. People began dunking on the dumbasses who bought Twitter Blue and many of the blue-check Musk fanboys raged out and threw tantrums on behalf of Musk.
Then, this weekend, it got even dumber and more asinine. Twitter began re-verifying accounts with more one million followers, including Twitter user “dril,” who is like one of the most iconic Twitter sh-tposters. The whole weekend was full of whole-ass celebrities coming on Twitter to deny paying the $8 and mocking Elon Musk’s whole deal. With dril, it seemed like Musk and his team were cyberstalking him and reverifying him repeatedly after he changed his name to get out of having that blue check. Not only that, but in the mass reverfication, Musk ended up reverifying the accounts of dead people like Jamal Khashoggi.
In summary, this is how a supposed “business genius” runs one of his companies, the company he bought to clout-chase. It’s blowing up in his dumb face and celebrities are openly mocking him. Well done.
“Let’s just reapply blue checks to accounts with >1 million followers, what could go wrong” pic.twitter.com/TNLG0e6fFj
— David Weigel (@daveweigel) April 23, 2023
Despite the implication when you click the blue badge that has mysteriously re-appeared beside my name, I am not paying for the "honour".
— Ian McKellen (@IanMcKellen) April 23, 2023
What other kind of product is so *embarrassing* that people feel compelled to explain it? No, no I didn’t really buy this thing. Honestly I didn’t.
Twitter Blue will be a marketing case study for years to come pic.twitter.com/SN2YLRlvoa
— Belinda Barnet (@manjusrii) April 23, 2023
They’re giving the blue check back to all the 1 million+ follower accounts to try to wash the stink off it but it’ll never work. No one is going to believe Beyoncé paid to have the same cursed mark as all of god’s least-loved children
— pixelatedboat aka “mr tweets” (@pixelatedboat) April 22, 2023
Elon is playing 4 dimensional chess and not winning on any of the 4 dimensions available
— JP (@jpbrammer) April 22, 2023
Elon is such a pissbaby nerd that he is re-verifying accounts against the wishes of the people behind them. pic.twitter.com/P6VWGPmEki
— BooIsHaving (@booishaving) April 22, 2023
personally, i think making jewish ppl wear badges they don’t want to wear is a bad look, but you do you, elon. pic.twitter.com/88lZsLUO6v
— ben schwartz (@benschwartz_) April 23, 2023
Photos courtesy of Cover Images, Backgrid.
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- New York, NY – Elon Musk attends the 2022 Met Gala in NYC. Pictured: Elon Musk BACKGRID USA 2 MAY 2022 USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- New York, NY – Elon Musk attends the 2022 Met Gala in NYC. Pictured: Elon Musk BACKGRID USA 2 MAY 2022 USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- New York, NY – Elon Musk sports $7500 Devil’s Champion – Leather Armor Set costume as he arrives with his mom Maye at Heidi Klum’s Halloween party in New York. Pictured: Elon Musk, Maye Musk BACKGRID USA 1 NOVEMBER 2022 BYLINE MUST READ: The Hapa Blonde / BACKGRID USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- Heidi Klum’s 21st Annual Halloween Party Presented By Now Screaming x Prime Video And Baileys Irish Cream Liqueur At Sake No Hana At Moxy Lower East Side Featuring: Elon Musk Where: New York, New York, United States When: 31 Oct 2022 Credit: BauerGriffin/INSTARimages.com/Cover Images
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- FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 final match between France v Argentina held at Lusail Stadium Featuring: Elon Musk Where: Doha, Qatar, Qatar When: 18 Dec 2022 Credit: David Niviere/ABACA/INSTARimages/Cover Images **North America Rights Only**
There are still people on Twitter? 😀
LOL, I am staying til the bitter end 😄
Live-tweeting the demise of Twitter is the perfect way to say goodbye to Twitter.
Do not go gentle
Into that soft rain
Shit-post, shit-post
While circling the drain
The best is Stephen King. His absolute disdain for Elon is glaring and Elon’s desperate attempts to buddy up to him are so sad and pathetic. Your idol hates you, Elon! Elon personally paid for King’s blue check before this latest nonsense and King disowned it and told him to donate it to a charity lol. Elon tries to engage King on his feed and King just ignores him, so hilarious
Steven King is so damn entertaining online lol. Love him.
He’s absolutely wonderful and was what made Twitter a fun place to be – anyone could have a conversation with Stephen King or Mark Hamill or sometimes both. I’ve had several conversations with King, mostly about dogs named Molly, The Thing of Evil; our Molly preceded his by a few decades. Patricia Arquette left shortly after Musk took over and I had lots of conversations with her, mostly about labor law and workplace discrimination and healthcare access programs but some fun stuff too. And Malcolm Nance and Kiersten Warren and her pets, which include Kirk Acevedo. King’s tactics with Musk have been stellar.
Yeah, I joined Reddit like eight years ago, and finally starting posting this year lol. I had restarted Twitter, but like a month or two later, Musk bought it. When he did that damn tweet about Pelosi’s husband, I was like, uh-uh. That cockr**ch (I have a severe phobia, can’t spell it out lmao) is a monumentally pathetic excuse for a human being.
The whole controversy of paid verification is teally not about money. Most celebs probably would have been happy to pay 8$ a month. The problem is that Twitter has existed so long without this paid verification and it’s always bad business practice to start charging for something that was free for so long. This always upsets customers.
Additionally, the paid verification comes without authentication, which means anyone can scam people with a verified account pretending to be a celeb. Disastrous possible outcomes to this.
The point of the blue check was to prevent Twitter from getting sued for not moderating content.
Can we all agree Musk is not a genius? Musk understands how to get billions in tax payer funding for his cars and rockets. We see what happens when he is allowed to run a company based on his own instincts.
Ben Schwartz’s tweet took the wind out of me.
He normally is just funny and self depreciation along with promotion.
Whew Chile.
That was indeed a sick burn.
It has been quite something to watch this fool bungle something so simple so badly. He is such a loser and all this is because of ego. PA-thetic.
I believe musky’s very expensive space phallus just blew up (ahem) prematurely also.
There goes his invitation to the Met Gala… douche.
Watching Elon step on rake after rake with this blue check fiasco is really something.
He COULD have made verification meaningful and widely available. Open verification to anyone who wants it, charge a one-time fee for checking people’s credentials, done. No link to “Twitter Blue” subscription service, no drama, no shady explanations necessary.
Now, because Elon has consistently lied about his motivations (it was always and only about money and his resentment of people better liked than he is), he’s reduced to giving the largest accounts blue checks because THEY are the reason anyone checks Twitter. As Stephen King pointed out from the jump, those accounts are the content creators providing value to the app.
At this point Elon has made it crystal clear, repeatedly, that he’s a liar who is going to continue to run Twitter unethically. Expect more of the same mean-spirited idiocy.
Those reactions, wow.
I’m not on Twitter so I’m watching this from the sidelines and the future case studies from all of this are going to be epic.
OMG yes yes and yes! There will be entire courses and text books devoted to this. “Business 101 How not to Musk up your company.” Business 103 how to make it seem like blowing up your rocket/penis symbol was intentional.
I respect everyone who did not buy their checkmark and is giving Musk shit about it. But, also, if people are that enraged by his tactics, they could also …..um… .. stop using Twitter.
I’m upset that he did Bourdain, too. I worked with him years ago. If he was alive he’d be spitting mad.
My personal (tin foil?) conspiracy theory is that Musk is trying to run Twitter into the ground on purpose to help far right cronies around the world. Twitter has been a major force in information sharing and social justice movements and if people stop using it/information is less reliable, etc they lose this essential method of communication. I deleted my Twitter acct when Musk took over but now I’m wondering if I should have kept it…
I agree but think it’s just about where water runs, and not a well thought out plan in action. If it was a money maker & ego stroke for him with ease- he would have kept it how it was. But since he lost money- he’ll get his money from somewhere else to “recoup his losses” and/or he’ll use it to gain power by running it into the ground. Also deleted my twitter & also think about regrets…it was the opposite of political run media & that’s what all these psychos want so they can control the only narrative.
Considering the Saudi Prince of it all (Prince Alwaleed bin Talal al Saud), amongst other members of extremist/ authoritarian governments who probably saw how Twitter fueled the Arab Spring & were just like “NOPE!,” you might be on to something.
It might be worth several billion for far right/ anti-democratic governments to severely defang and discredit Twitter.
Elon‘s a con artist, but sometimes those types get caught in their own webs.
He’s only about the money/ clout, basically 2-3 steps away from Marvel villain, if he’s lucky (he couldn’t even sit at the table with DC villains… at least, the old style ones).