Celebrities, including dril, now working to remove their apparently mandatory Twitter checkmarks
The dumb-as-hell, completely unnecessary drama surrounding what should be a basic identity verification system progressed apace today
Aux News Twitter
It’s been a dumber than average couple of days on Twitter of late—and yeah, we know, low bar to clear—as Elon Musk’s 4/20 edict to remove “legacy” verification marks finally went into effect. (Those were the ones distributed once upon a time to users to clarify that they were who they said they were, as opposed to the current system, which uses the blue check to tag paid subscribers to the Twitter Blue service for relentless avoidance.) Shortly after the Great Purge, though, several famous people began noticing that they somehow had a blue check mark anyway, complete with a false statement that they’d paid for Twitter Blue and “verified their phone number” to get the mark. It started with a few people—William Shatner, LeBron James, Stephen King—and has since spread to a number of big-name, high-follower accounts.
In his various irritating-to-parse tweets about this stuff—interspersed with videos of his rocket launches that typically omit the bits where the rockets subsequently explode—Musk has said he’s “paying for” some celebrities’ Blue accounts himself. This is typically presented, with Elon Musk’s general “lurked on the Something Awful forums but wasn’t funny enough to actually post” approach to online humor, as an act of sublime trolling of his critics. (Without questioning the basic assumption that Musk is basically admitting that his much-ballyhooed feature operates functionally as a mark of shame for an enormous number of people.) The end result has been folks like Patton Oswalt looking for ways to get rid of the blue mark, usually by, reportedly, briefly changing their display name or avatar to juke the verification system.
The most prominent such user today has, unsurprisingly, been dril, who remains, in many ways, the strange, grotesquely beating heart of Twitter. The massively popular online comedian—who recently did an interview out-of-character for the first time, and who currently has 1.7 million followers on Twitter—has had a blue check appear and disappear multiple times on his account today, amidst tweeting out a series of harsh insults to Musk. Most recently, retweeting a post about the Lanham Act, which covers false attempts to make someone look like they endorse a product—and if us learning about U.S. copyright law from a dril tweet isn’t the ultimate indicator of how dumb today has been, we don’t know what is.
Wait, actually, we do: It’s seeing the “subscribed to Twitter Blue and verified their phone number” language on the account of late actors and performers like Chadwick Boseman and Norm Macdonald, where it popped up today along with the returned checks. Current speculation is that blue checks—and possibly just Twitter Blue itself—are being given to anyone with more than 1 million followers on the service. But there’s a special kind of irritation that comes from seeing beloved dead celebrities get co-opted into this effort as Elon Musk continues to assert, yet again, that he’s not owned, he’s not owned.
152 Comments
So dumb. So, so dumb.
A true hero put it on YouTube…. *adds to the reference file*
If dril goes to some other app, I think many of us would follow. Not much else worth looking at on Twitter anyway.
Weird how true this is actually. I mean if dril very publicly announced he was moving to another site, it’d be the first post-twitter site I’d give a serious try. Crazy how influential dril is.
To be fair, I had never heard of him before last week.
You’ve probably heard of him without knowing it. Renew the whole “help me balance my budget I’m spending $2k a month on candles” meme? That was dril
I have no idea what you’re talking about.
I’ve only heard of him because of this site, the writers on here seems to love him.
Yeah surely. Just like all those people “threatening” to leave the country when Trump won and never left 🙂
There are still various sub-communities (other than dudes who want to be and/or fuck Elon Musk) that get value out of Twitter. When Black Twitter goes, for instance, we’ll know the site is about done.
What or who is dril?
This is dumb from both sides. Musk is just invalidating his system, for sure. But also this is just another remind that the only thing you can truly do to stick it to Elon on Twitter is to just leave it.
Just because Big Man Moneybags buys the community center everyone loves and wants to turn it into condos doesn’t mean you let him. Sometimes you need to have a catchy chant and a bikini car wash to raise enough money to kick his butt back to the big city and leave us alone.I forgot where I was going with this.
Now I gotta rewatch Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo. Thanks a lot.
It’s also notable that if he’s posting false statements to big name celebrities’ accounts and then admitting elsewhere that he’s doing to just to mess with them becaused he knows they’d view it as a negative, then in addition to the Lantham act violations, he’s handing them what I have to assume is a pretty decent set-up for a libel case. He already basically fired himself, we might just want to sit back and let him keep jumping on his own grenades.
Has anybody read Twitter’s terms and conditions and seen if there’s anything about an opt-out to Twitter Blue? Sign up for Peacock Free, if they gift your account a subscription to an ad-free plan, can you sue them?
I’d imagine the problem lies more in a big sticker that says “X has taken steps to earn this and gave me their phone number” than the check itself. You can probably give someone a service they don’t want as part of the terms of sign-up; I doubt that gives you license to lie about how they got it.
It doesn’t say anything unless you go to the profile and click on the checkmark, and then it says, “This account is verified because they are subscribed to Twitter Blue and verified their phone number. Learn more.” I appreciate that there are people who were really invested in the old verification system, and who’ve been ragging so hard on the new verification system that the idea of having a Twitter Blue subscription wounds them psychologically, but I just don’t think Twitter giving complementary upgrades to notable people is cause for a lawsuit.Twitter, like a lot of other apps, makes it really easy to give them your number, and difficult not to give it to them at some point or another. Maybe Twitter claiming that somebody gave them a phone number when they didn’t is lying, but honestly, if you’re so publicly against Twitter that it’s damaging to your career for people to think you entered your phone number when you installed the app, you should probably just quit the site.
The idea that popular people you want to hear from are on Twitter is the center of the whole service’s appeal. People are on it because popular people are on it. And basically, Musk’s plan with Twitter Blue requires that thinking to extend to his premium service. So now that we’ve reached his Hitler’s Birthday deadline for signing up, it looks like the Twitter Blue numbers suck, and that the only way for Musk to create the illusion that the premium service is popular with popular people is to comp a bunch of them who didn’t ask for it…as a “joke.” And that is a deceptive business practice, which is illegal.Now, it’s possible Musk covered himself, sending those folks an email that they were getting comped, and for how long, and giving them an opportunity to opt out, which they then ignored because that’s what people do to emails from Twitter. But, for a guy who wants people to trust his cars to drive them around, and to actually get living people safely to the surface of Mars, he’s extremely half-ass in his thinking and planning.
Genuine question, Twitter is a private company, so who’s going to sue it for giving away subscriptions to Twitter Blue? Who’s this deceiving? I could see it maybe being like when Apple started Apple+ and gave a year for free to anybody who bought something from them, so they had big subscriber numbers while nobody was actually paying. Apple is publicly traded, so shareholders, but if Twitter gives away a whole bunch of Twitter Blue upgrades, it’s a private company, so where’s the fraud?I haven’t tweeted since 2014, so the whole thing just seems completely ridiculous. People were complaining that they spent years providing content for the site for free, that they shouldn’t get gouged $8 a month to keep something they didn’t pay for, that if they don’t have a check next to their name, it makes them vulnerable to impersonation, and they get comped Twitter Blue to solve all of those problems, and they get even angrier.
Apple didn’t give people Apple+ selectively. The complimentary Apple+ deal was disclosed to the public (indeed, it was advertised as a feature). IIRC, the people who had purchased new devices weren’t automatically signed up for A+, the user still had to sign up for it to count as a subscriber. Plus the number of new devices Apple sold was publicly available information, so anyone trying to get a clearer picture of A+’s success could factor new device purchases into their model. Transparency and choice make things less deceptive.By comparison, Musk seems to have comped up people against their will, did not disclose any criteria for being comped or the number of people being comped, and tried to pass it off as a practical joke, that he “paid” for (that is, comped, the checkmark doesn’t cost him anything) people’s checkmarks when they stepped up to say they hadn’t signed up. Musk’s blue checkmark very specifically does not fix any impersonation problems (it actually added some) that’s why so few people wanted it. Musk’s actions were more like that time Apple forced everyone on their system to have the new U2 album; if you recall, everyone agreed that sucked and was not good.
Apple is a public company, and it was a trial, so people were agreeing to pay at the end of it if they didn’t cancel before.
Yes, but only if you first signed up for the free 1-year subscription. You could just ignore the free subscription offers completely and not be charged. With a lot of the people complaining about their secret “just a joke” complimentary checkmark, the current pricing doesn’t seem to be the obstacle, the obstacle is Musk’s mismanagement of the company and his inconsistent ideas of “free speech” and transparency. He’s just not trustworthy.
Which would be a better analogy if the information for the comped Blue Checks read “This user has been granted Twitter Blue free of charge because of their value to the Twitter community.” As it stands, it’s basically implying that the people who have it are endorsing Musk’s repurposing of the Blue Check from “This notable user of Twitter has been verified to be authentic.” to “This user is paying $96/year or more for a few minor features to make their Twitter experience more pleasant.”Elon Musk is not giving these users Twitter Blue out of the goodness of his all-loving heart; he’s giving it to them to boost Twitter Blue’s viability. I don’t blame them for wanting nothing to do with it.
Honestly, I feel like unless you have a visceral loathing of Elon Musk, this is all ridiculous. The old verification system was a little useful, but also swamped by a whole bunch of nobodies and near-nobodies using it as a status symbol, some of whom paid thousands of dollars to Twitter employees to hook them up.So Twitter eliminated all that, made verification a feature of Twitter Blue, and make a practice of giving notable people with large followings Twitter Blue for free, and people are losing their minds they’re so angry. I do get it, social media addiction is a real thing, and I can see how someone might get a dopamine boost from seeing a little sticker next to their name that says they’re special. I mean, the fact that people were paying up to $15,000 for it says that it was providing people real value, even if just psychologically.You can’t use his site, making content to engage your following to keep them hanging around and coming back without adding value to it. They can write in their bio that they hate Twitter and are forced to use it under protest by powers beyond their control if it makes them feel better, but free subscriptions to premium Twitter for power users of the site is only a bad thing if you have a serious hatred of Twitter.
You didn’t address my main point: After months of saying that the Blue Check would simply be a perk of Twitter Blue ($8/month, such a bargain!), causing some celebrities to push back very vocally at the change and saying they wouldn’t pay for it, Elon Musk has been forcing the check on many popular accounts, including people who said they wanted nothing to do with the new system, and hasn’t done anything to distinguish those mandatory checks from ones that were bought and paid for. Musk is trying to use people who oppose the new Twitter Blue in order to promote Twitter Blue. Again, if the information that popped up for the comped checks read something like “This user has earned free Twitter Blue privileges for amassing over 1 million subscribers.” or any such marketspeak making it clear that they didn’t pay for it, then sure, I’d say it’s not worth fighting over. Lacking such a simple distinction, though, and judging from Musk’s other actions, I think he’s deliberately trying to make it seem as though all these celebrities have decided Twitter Blue is worth paying for, so why not you?
And you aren’t addressing my point. Yes, if you loathe Elon Musk and believe that Twitter Blue is a horrible monstrosity poisoning the website and all of its users, then sure. But it isn’t inherently and objectively bad.I feel like the simplest explanation is probably the correct one, which is that Elon is trying to do what he’s been continuously and explicitly saying that he’s trying to do, which is get rid of the old tiered system of Twitter, where some people were marked as being more special than others, which is why he isn’t going to make a tier within Twitter Blue marking some people as special.
Um, wut?
I half-read that, but yes, surely he will face steep consequences for his underhanded deeds THIS time!
I mean, as of March, it’s cost him $24 billion or so just on the Twitter deal. Forbes estimates his net worth is down $182 billion from two years ago, probably the biggest single person loss in history. Dying in jail is a longshot, but the damage this is clearly doing to his ego is going to make him some other company’s problem in 5 years, I’d bet money.
Yep. The whole game on Twitter has become mocking Elon and seeing what dumb shit you can get him to do to further drive it down the toilet.
I saw that movie on Cinemax once
Pretty sure you were going to say that dril and Elon should do a 24 hour tweet-a-thon, most likes gets the whole shebang! The hell with that ratio nonsense, I’m not doing math.
Danceathon, obv.
1985 is where you were going with this. Godspeed.
What you have to do is collect a bunch of crops and weird fish and stuff to appease the spirits that live in the ruined community center and then it gets restored and the evil businessman kicked out of town. At least that’s how it works in Stardew Valley. I’m not sure how accurate it is. I’ve also learned from that that you can get women to fall in love with you by giving them dandelions and seashells, but that doesn’t seem to work in my experience.
Yeah, it seems obvious to me. Elon shit the bed, you don’t have to keep laying in it. Let it go the way of Myspace (not implying Twitter is anywhere as good or cool as Myspace of course).
Nah, he isn’t benefitting from the attention. He’s already too rich to fail, there’s no downside in showering him with negative attention and mocking him mercilessly on the very platform he operates.
Yup. There’s two things to remember about Musky, which makes mocking him on his own platform delicious, and the celebs he’s paying mocking him even more delicious:* He’s always been a dweeb. All his life. * He’s always been rich. All his life. This is a guy used to buying friends and trinkets that will endear himself to others, and this time it’s backfiring gloriously.
What is dumb from the other side? No one is doing anything on the other side. It is just one big Musk fake-laugh/sob temper tantrum as he realizes the cool kids he actually wants to hang out with are still making fun of him.
Exactly. Twitter is no longer a valid social media site. It’s just a Musk ego game now.
Norm Macdonald and Chadwick Boseman didn’t just leave twitter they left this mortal coil and they still can’t get away from the forced blue check.
I assume neither is tweeting though.
Hang on, I’ve almost got a Frank Stallone joke
This is dumb from both sides.
the only thing you can truly do to stick it to Elon on Twitter is to just leave it.Not really. This whole thing is leading Musk down a bigger and bigger spiral. Remember that it was King’s tweet about how dumb $20 was that got him to drop it to $8.He’s a guy you can easily bait with a tweet and the company is in a tailspin because of it.
I deactivated my account when they suspended journalist for the flight tracking stuff, but hung around and checked twitter without an account until last week. When the blue check change happened they turned the landing page of twitter into completely useless garbage for users without an account. I will not be returning at all not, because I cannot even see the trending list, and only see tweets from blue checks, mostly Elon’s.
There are few things in this world that I’m certain of, but one thing that I know for sure is that Norm Macdonald’s ghost wouldn’t pay for Twitter Blue. This subscription is clearly the work of an imposter ghost. I suspect the ghost of Frank Stallone, who is alive, yet remains the ghost of Frank Stallone.
At least to the correct set up for, you guessed it, Frank Stallone.
The more I learn about it, the more I think this impostor ghost is a real jerk.
And Elon Musk tried to take over … THE WORLD .. That had never been tried before. And you’d think .. THE WORLD .. would, like, beat him right away, but no, it was close!
People say that Norm MacDonald’s ghost is too old for Twitter, that it’s over the hill. Why, Norm’s ghost, you’ll never be over the hill, not in the car you drive!
At least his ghost has a pretty face. It’s pretty like a flower. A Cauliflower!
Elon Musk has the grace of a swan, the wisdom of an owl and the eye of an eagle – ladies and gentlemen, this man is for the birds!!!
Image trying to make people like you by giving them free stuff, only for them to loudly tell everyone, they don’t want it, never asked for it and aren’t your friend…
But it’s kinda undercut by the fact that they keep hanging out at the asshole’s house.
Now imagine you are the richest person in the world and you are doing this?You almost have to feel sorry for Musk. He very clearly has some “Daddy never told me he loves me” level psychological issues and he is the ultimate case study in “Money can’t buy you everything”. It’s really pathetic
did you see that “prove I’m not an emerald mine heir” thing where apparently his dad was like “ummm”
He’s estranged from his dad. The false claim is he financed his education and started his businesses with emeralds.The emeralds that estranged daddy never gave him? Um, wut?
His dad, from what I can gather, thinks Elon’s a bit of a dick. He’s not an easy child to love.There’s the story the neckbeards like to wheel out about their god – that he was bullied so hard in school he got pushed down the stairs and hospitalised. It’s told from a awkward-nerd-achieves-good-in-face-of-mean-high-school-bullies angle, a pure victim who was just attacked by the mean jocks. See also: man who makes millions off an online casino aimed at tweens:Elon’s dad was the one who came out and said that the reason Elon got pushed down the stairs and hospitalised was because he was teasing the said pusher about how his dad committed suicide, and said “I think Elon went too far”.
“I don’t know Kelsey, how’s your mom’s pill addiction?”
At least the people on Tumblr only want to fuck Draco Malfoy. Elon Musk’s Twitter simps seem to actually want to be him.
That’s his popularity. It’s not because he’s smart, clever, good-looking, witty (jesus fucking christ, he cannot meme, and memes have replaced sarcasm as the lowest form of wit) – it’s because he’s every basement-dwelling mouthbreather’s ultimate aspirationalist fantasy.
They see him say the exact sort of weird neckbeard shit they spout to an attractive woman reporter from Bloomberg or somewhere (“EVERYONE WHO COMES WITH ME TO MARS WILL GET A CATGIRL GIRLFRIEND, LOLZ!”), and instead of her reacting by going “Ew, get away from me, you fucking creep”, they laugh and ask him a follow-up question. That’s their dream right there. Remember what Steve Bannon said about “rootless white males”? How they’re easy pickings for exploitation and mobilisation by grifters like him? Kids looking for an in-group, common ground, and a sense of purpose?That’s most of the Muskovites (there’s also an alarming amount who are women and people of colour, as well as the odd idiot Boomer Business Bro – you know, guys asking for your email address so they can send you their FREE ebook, “Eight Effective Business Growth Success Habits To Grow Your Business Successfully”).Unfortunately, unlike Tumblr, part of being a Muskovite is putting yourself out there – like he does! Insinuating yourself into every conversation and topic because you’re a genius – you’re doing everyone a favour! You can do that, because you’re smart at EVERYTHING! And better than anyone else doing it!Even if it costs you eight bucks a month!
Because if anyone screams “cool kid in junior high”, it’s Patton Oswalt.
The funniest part of Sweeney’s tweet is the admission that the $8 crew are not the cool ones.
Hey, hey. Hey, now: he’s not wrong. They ain’t. It’s a bit…rich…that a guy on the Forbes Rich List (from giving kids a gambling addiction before they’ve had the first period) thinks he’s oppressed because…nerd…and that $8 a month is somehow “egalitarian”, especially for nothing. And that the tick still means what it meant a year ago. That tells me he’s just a bloke who believes that money should buy him access, and make up for whatever personal failings he knows he has. As someone said, no one throws a tantrum like a billionaire whose money can’t get him what he wants.
I thought “nerds” were supposed to be smart. Do these people really not understand what problems the blue check mark system solved? Are they really this stupid?
They really do not. These are the sorts of guys who think that buying a big expensive, say, digital camera makes them Annie fuckin’ Leibovitz, and should be afforded the same level of respect and status. That’s exactly the logic here. Neckbeards have never been good at semiotics: they think that the people they looked up to were cool/knowledgeable/famous because they got the blue tick, no that they got the blue tick because they were cool/knowledgeable famous. That’s most of their argument – it wasn’t that the blue ticks got theirs in the Dorsey days because they were vetted and checked to be worthy, but just because the Twitter Cool Kids got to pick favourites. Neckbeards have never been able to generate their own cultural capital – embodied cultural capital – and most don’t have the guts or talent or discipline to do anything with their lives and get some institutionalised cultural capital, so all that’s left is for them to buy it: objectified cultural capital. And that’s why Musky’s grift works so well on them – it’s all they understand, and they sincerely believe that owning the same things as Stephen King has – even if it’s against King’s will – elevates them to the same status as Stephen King himself.Or Anthony Bourdain – yes, Musk is bestowing blue ticks on famous dead people:Yes, this has happened and it’s as gross as you’d expect. Jamal Khashoggi, who was hacksawed to pieces by Twitter’s second-largest financier, Saudi Arabia, has also been given a blue tick. Since these trinkets are how they define themselves – the bought symbols – the neckbeards take it personally when you fail to acknowledge or care about them. And in their mind, because it’s the only way to define oneself, not having one makes you an unperson.And this is why there’s also such a concerted effort to bully others into buying the tick – it’s not just because it validates their own purchase, it’s because they assume that if you own the same symbols…then you have to be their friend.
Since these trinkets are how they define themselves – the bought symbols – the neckbeards take it personally when you fail to acknowledge or care about them. And in their mind, because it’s the only way to define oneself, not having one makes you an unperson.And this is why there’s also such a concerted effort to bully others into buying the tick – it’s not just because it validates their own purchase, it’s because they assume that if you own the same symbols…then you have to be their friend.Fucking THANK YOU.
No worries. It’s not just blue ticks, of course, it’s been around for AGES.How many times have you seen this variation of a conversation?Regular person: “I didn’t much like Cyberpunk 2077.”Neckbeard: “YEAH BUT YOU STILL PLAYED IT, DIDN’T YOU? ONE OF US! ONE OF US! ONE OF US!”Replace CP2077 with…whatever current pop-culture signifier that tends to attract chuds you like. I just used CP2077 because this is exactly where it played out for me recently. MCU films, Star Wars, John Wick, Disney films, K-pop, any video game, whatever. (And before I get pilloried, I’m not saying any of these things are bad, just that they tend to attract chuds. Though I do think CP2077 wasn’t great.)All you have to do, in their mind, to be defined and validated by something is to simply consume it…whether you want to or not, whether you enjoyed it or not.It’s exactly why Musk is buying blue ticks for his critics – like dril and Matthew Binder:He can’t unsubscribe, because Musk made sure of that. Musk’s trying to place Binder and dril in the same bucket of crabs as his fans, which, in his mind, does one of two things: it somehow lets his foetid mouthbreathers ride Binder’s status have and have it rub off them (he and the fanbois think), and it also places Binder in the same group he dislikes – Musk fans – so Binder’s at risk of hitting himself in Musk’s mind.There’s one thing Musk doesn’t count on, because the neckbeards don’t know it, understand, and sure as hell don’t trust it: personal, subjective, qualitative judgement of things.People can just look at things and – shock, horror – decide for themselves if they like it based on their own judgement. Normal, emotionally mature, confident, grown up people can.The neckbeards ain’t good at that. Trusting, and (worse!) publicly stating your personal judgement is hard if you a) have zero self-confidence, and b) only do things to fit into an in-group you want to be a part of – you’ll automatically defer to whatever the mob says, lest ye be shunned and lose your identity.So even if dril or Binder has been branded with the Mark of Yarpie Cain, anyone with a fucking brain and a some basic reasoning skills, read their tweets and decide if they want to block him or not. Musk doesn’t know how to handle this, nor do his fans – aren’t people just meant to go off labels and branding and superficial signifiers like the blue tick? Shit. Qualitative assessment terrifies the neckbeards, because it involves putting their own opinions and personal interpretive skill out there, which is a product of who they really are, and they, more than anyone else, know they’re actually pretty terrible people. They know their thoughts are shit.And hence it’s safer to hold up things like checkmarks and other “known good” things that no one can argue with because they have established, ratified, third-party meaning, instead of trying to say something yourself.
Sweeney posts such dumb shit on the regular that the artifacting and stretching on his avatar makes him look like a parody account.
I think my favorite story about him was that desperate letter to Apple’s Tim Cook where he tried to get him to sing kumbaya and waive the fees Epic would have to pay for using the Apple storefront, only for Cook to forward it to someone with the question, paraphrased, “who is this dude”
That tweet up there of his radiates massive I-turned-up-at-my-high-school-reunion-in-a-helicopter-and-Lisa-Richards-still-didn’t-talk-to -me energy.And that’s all it is: “I have money now. Now you HAVE to respect me!!!!!” except we don’t, no one does, and you can’t buy that. That’s why he loves the buyable tick so much! Now people have to base their respect for you on the money they can spend, which is the only thin Timmy wants to be judged on. I think my favorite story about him was that desperate letter to Apple’s Tim Cook where he tried to get him to sing kumbaya and waive the fees Epic would have to pay for using the Apple storefront, only for Cook to forward it to someone with the question, paraphrased, “who is this dude”HAHA! I remember that. And no, it wasn’t some snarky “Lol, I think you’re nothing, Sweeney”. It was legit “I have no idea who this guy is”.
Whats strange is, every celeb gets free shit all the time. This is no different.Ive never heard of someone bitching about that free grab bag at X event worth a hundred years of checkmark verification.
Going for 100 on the test huh?https://www.theonion.com/quiz-could-you-pass-the-spacex-aptitude-test-1850361878/slides/27
Yeah but said grab bags are peddled by Cunts… well not as big a Cunt as Musk is anyway
The difference is that those grab bags aren’t taped to their back with “kick me” written on them.
Seems weird to comment about how little you understand what’s going on.
The free grab bags are very clearly gifts. There’s
no implication that the celebrities bought those things themselves, and
there’s no public-facing markers involved that announce a celebrity owns
a thing without also indicating how they got it, without any input from
the celebrity themselves.The problem with comped Twitter Blue is that it’s a non-returnable gift with a very public-facing signifier that does not
indicate how it was acquired. So you’ve got a whole bunch of
celebrities announcing that no, they did not pay money for this service
and for the most part don’t want it.And most of them
don’t want it because the whole blue checkmark thing has gotten so
stupid that having one is a net negative for them at this point.There’s a reason most businesses, celebrities and PR people take sponsorships very seriously, and are extremely careful to differentiate between
gifts, compensation, and sponsorships. Elon’s just being a big braying
dumbass with it because he knows his trusty lawyer army will clean up
any messes if they happen, and Twitter is a sinking ship anyway so he
might as well just throw shit at the wall.
It isn’t about the money, it’s about the public support that is inferred from a high profile account with a Check.Getting a free bag of stuff that is mostly out of the public view and I would imagine in some cases also discarded. It isn’t the same thing as being openly touted as finically supporting this product.
It is different. It’s like sewing a MAGA hat onto someone’s head. For free.
Did you want someone to bitch about those fucking bags? If so, I mean, I got some time today, and I hate those fucking things.
You almost have to feel sorry for Musk.
“Almost” is doing an awful lot of heavy lifting there, lol. I don’t disagree with you, yet I still find myself having absolutely no trouble not feeling sorry for Elon Musk.
What really sticks out is, he’s got defenders! Loud ones! Strident ones! He could easily just bask in the worship of his acolytes but you can clearly tell that’s not enough for him. He wants everyone to know he is good and cool and funny.It’s the most publicly insecure anyone has ever been.
The Musk stans in the greys keep telling me how wrong I am. I really don’t understand the cult this guy seems to have.
I really don’t understand the cult this guy seems to have. It’s because he “proved” that someone can be rich and successful without having to learn social or relationship skills.Consider the folks who worship the guy, and it makes more sense.
Daddy did in fact just sell Elon out for a pocketful of dogecoins on that emeralds thing, so you’re not wrong.
Everything he does seems so desperate which, definitely by his age, I thought everyone knew was the least cool possible thing you can seem.
You almost have to feel sorry for Musk.
No, we really don’t.
He wasn’t doing it to make them like him. He was doing it to crush the BlockTheBlue protest by making a ton of loved accounts have the Blue checkmark to try and make it look “cool” and harder for people to know who they actually need to block because it’s not unsure if a blue check is from the person buying it or elon forcing it on them…
Of course he is doing it to disrupt the protest. That is the clearest thing about any of his involvement in twitter. He’s positioned it himself as “paying” for them personally, as if anyone actually believes that, so there is a certain amount of hubris in the entire effort and he is absolutely doing it for adoration. If not from these few celebrities, definitely from the people that think he is smart and doing a great job.
speaking of which, i have to delete that stupid U2 album from my itunes for the 300th time.
U2 slides Songs of Innocence under the carpet …
This whole thing is basically Musk’s version of Trump’s Presidential campaign.Both are affront’s to democracy and free speech that help elevate the worst people in society, but at the same time completely destroys the image of the person who did it with everyone who isn’t a complete sycophant.
Get rid of their checks huh? I want to support this. I would assume the easiest way to get rid of your blue check is probably to just delete your Twitter account, make it extremely clear that you aren’t on Twitter at all, and never look back.
Elon Musk fan, sweating profusely and trembling: “No, you guys just don’t get it … it actually makes … see, in chess sometimes you need to … he’s so ahead of the curve …”
I’ve heard one say “He’s intentionally losing a crap pile of money right now to…” something, something.
Obligatory:His rocket, by the way, likely blew up because three years ago he wanted to be edgy and prove he don’t need no shit that pussies like NASA or Roscosmos or the ESA or ISRO or CNSA use like “flame trenches” or “deluge system” and the lack of those things were what causes debris to kick up from the pad and damage the five engines that took it out.His engines told him this when they were building the Texas facility all those years ago.
Being born rich is amazing. The complete luxury to be a public buffoon and fail repeatedly, and have it hardly matter.
We aren’t talking about Trump…oh wait.
Yesterday I saw a guy, in all earnestness (judging by everything else he’s ever posted), call Elon a “master of the symphony” who is “playing his opponents like a violin.” He used an AI-generated image of Elon playing the violin… with a broken bow.It seems to be a Musk fan you have to mimic your leader and abandon all sense of self-awareness.
Musk flushing $44 BILLION down the drain to try to buy street cred from the worst people alive (and fucking failing!) is the best argument I have ever seen for a massive, borderline punitive, wealth tax on billionaires. Who can seriously argue that the wealthy should have such unchecked power to dictate where society spends its resources after watching this?
Tax lol. Expropriation.
Are you a billionaire?
No.
Do you have a point beyond showing off a new word you learned?
Lol what?You offered a half-measure, I offered a full measure.
BuriedAliveOpener gets weirdly aggressive about replies instead of just ignoring or dismissing them, but in the case yeah, that wasn’t clear. Kinda’ seemed like you were calling tax itself “expropriation.”
I mean, to be fair here, what he did was trade a lot of Tesla stock of a theoretical value for Twitter stock and debt. It isn’t like he ever had $44 billion in the way that people have money, and it isn’t like he lost it when the theoretical value of his holdings went down. Jeff Bezos isn’t actually making money when the Amazon stock price goes up because he owns a lot of that stock. A tax on billionaires severe enough that would have prevented Elon Musk from being able to take control of Twitter would mean essentially that private companies would be taken away from people once they reach a big enough size.
ever missing the point jesus christ
Blue check means you’re paying for it
Or that Elon Musk is paying for it, because he doesn’t want his idea to look like a failure he’s a generous, kind-hearted billionaire.
Sure, he’s “paying”.
How is your… reading?
Blue check is embarrassing. No one wants the world to know they can’t get some without paying for it.
Not a bad comparison, actually. Your money’s on the dresser, Elon.
So funny to hear assholes complain about $8 a month. LOL.
I don’t know if it’s “complaining” so much as “not paying.”
So are you intentionally misinterpreting what this is about in order to get in your pointless insult, or has your brain actually turned to mush from too much exposure to the right wing echo chamber?
No, he’s correct. Watching liberal bitches literally whine and cry about a fucking digital blue check mark is hilarious. If that’s your biggest worry in life, this country isn’t as bad as they claim it to be.
whynotboth.gif
Lil’ Samhain is one of the wannabe edgy dipshits hereabouts. Usually on The Root.
Not as funny as watching an asshole lose more money then anyone ever has in the history of capitalism because he wanted to stick it to the “woke mob”
How about watching the jealous psycho assholes obsess over how much money Elon’s losing. He’s still a billionaire. Twitter hasn’t collapsed, like the freak fringe claimed it would. The fact all these distraught celebs haven’t left HIS platform yet proves they need him more than he needs them. Where are they going to go to bitch and whine about him?
You’re wrong so often it must be a kink.Wash your hands when you’re done.
Much funnier is some asshole trying to charge $8 for junk mostly no one wants.
i could spend eight dollars a month or i could just squeeze the bags of juice with my bare hands
Read the article again but be less stupid this time.
My favourite bit is when those assholes get pissed no one else cares that they have a blue tick, and they’re just paying to out themselves as a chud.
looks like the lib-bots already replied with all the published talking points. carry on with your enjoyment of celebs talking about leaving twitter . . . on twitter.
LOL., indeed.But like, God damn, do I not want to hear from some loser who spent $8 just to suck Elon’s dick and force their bad crypto or right-wing bullshit into my feed.
https://www.theonion.com/please-like-me-1848674003
I hope they take him for everything, you don’t want celebrities’ lawyers unleashed on you.
I have no choice but to keep Twitter because a few people tweet things that are relevant to my job and I need to be able to see them. I have never used it, really, but I followed a few journalists I like and it pains me to see how they just cannot jump ship and are still tweeting or linking things like 20 times a day. It’s like self-harm, and self-harm that benefits Musk.There was some Musk article recently and all of the comments down below on fb were like “this guy is totally insane” “this guy is a complete fucking loser” “I got off the Tesla waiting list because of what a douche this guy is” and they were coming from like actual normal people not like the WSJ comments section…makes me somewhat optimistic that Musk doesn’t know how far his bad rep has gone among people who aren’t wannabe bitcoin bros who follow Tesla’s every market rise and fall, failing on this huge scale (and in such a pathetic manner) has really really damaged his image. Hopefully irreparably.Also, it’s the “Lanham” Act
FYI: You don’t actually have to have a Twitter membership to read stuff on Twitter. I guess if you want notifications or whatever you would have to, though.
Now, the Star-Belly Sneetches had bellies with stars. The Plain-Belly Sneetches had none upon thars. Those stars weren’t so big. They were really so small. You might think such a thing wouldn’t matter at all.
Yeah, the fact that people are aggressively impersonating government agencies won’t come back to bite anyone in the ass, I’m sure.
This would be the sort of thing I was referencing last week. People like this, who absolutely will pay for it, because they see it as some kind of “club membership” (I’ll avoid the term “validation,” because some people seem to have trouble understanding that words have two or more meanings):
Celebs get free stuff equivalent to a hundred years of checkmarks at red carpet events and people bitch. AT EVERY EVENT.Wait, who’s is complaining again? Those very celebs?Um, wut?
MuskRat
Today I leaned Dril is a celebrity.
As I’ve said elsewhere, the new revenue plan is apparently to force the mark on people and make them pay $8 to have it removed.
$8/month to buy a blue checkmark when you don’t have one and want one, but $80/month to remove a blue checkmark when you have one and don’t want it.
Twitter is cannibalizing itself, thanks to this moron, and I have to say, it’s quite difficult to wipe the smile off of my face. 😂Twitter is a cancer to civilized society. Between Twitter and tiktok, the collective IQ of this country has gone down the toilet. And Elon is proving he doesn’t know a damn thing about running a business..
The best part of this whole thing is Musk came in with verification being a means to make high-profile users feel protected enough to generate free content for his site….and then he pissed it all away to such an extent he literally cannot even give the blue check away. He’s turned what was previously one of the most important parts of Twitter’s business model in to a joke, and people are so embarassed to have it Musk added an option to hide the damn thing while keeping the “perks” of Twitter Blue.
Everyone involved in this story is covered in wet shit.
I am still surprised that in the modern world one guy can have enough money to buy a huge social network only to destroy it, among the many things he is pouring a lot of money into just to burn it.
Normally these weird fuckin’ nerds are created when a girl/boy tells them “no”, but I have a feeling Musk was born because at no point in his life someone told him “you are fucking annoying, fuck off”.
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