RIFF Magazine

REWIND: An ode to my dearly departed Twitter blue check

LeBron James, Twitter checkmark

LeBron James doesn’t want his Twitter check.

It was a busy week. There was 4/20, which I don’t partake in. There was baseball news, which I don’t want to talk about. All great column topics. But one thing happened that must be addressed: I lost my blue check on Twitter.

Now, don’t get me wrong, in general I don’t care. It helped me get freelance work years ago since any additional credibility helps, but recently it’s just been for bragging rights and getting my replies into the special Verified mentions for famous people I wanted to heckle. But I don’t cover general news anymore, I haven’t covered a riot in years and it really doesn’t matter whether anyone knows I’m the real me or not.



What annoys me is how and why it happened. I’m sure you all know, but one of the world’s preeminent idiot failsons, Elon Musk, couldn’t understand the difference between “you’re verified because you have an important or noteworthy job” and “you’re important or noteworthy because you’re verified.” It was a reflection of noteworthiness, not a source of it. So obviously, one of his first acts as Twitter owner was to vow to let everyone pay for the prestige a blue check doesn’t create.

So far it’s gone exactly as well as you’d expect.

Let’s go over some of the nuance of the latest hilarious development in the rapid unscheduled disassembly of a once-major social network.

Garth Brooks — “Friends in Low Places”

Did you know Garth Brooks doesn’t have his music on YouTube or Spotify? Weird.

Anyway, first off, let’s address the fact that I’ve rejoined the common rabble. I used to be in my blue check ivory tower looking down on you all as your better, and now I’m in the dirt among you despite still being your better. It’s distasteful.

It’s even worse than losing out on all the blue check benefits! We had a special lounge where we could hang out away from you people, for example. There was a penthouse apartment in the Twitter building in S.F. we could crash at. George Soros sent us each a check every two weeks. Remember when the Krassenstein brothers got banned? That was me, I had that power because of my blue check. But worse than losing all of that is having to associate with commoners.

Nah, I’m kidding, I wouldn’t have noticed if it wasn’t announced in advance.



Puff Daddy — “It’s All About the Benjamins”

Of course, anyone with two neurons to rub together knows ol’ Musky didn’t do this to democratize anything. He didn’t do it for free speech; “free” is literally 50 percent of the words in the term, charging $8 for speech makes it not free by definition. He did it because he put a $44 billion bid on a company as a joke, discovered that the courts don’t recognize the “did it for the lulz” defense, immediately ran off all the advertisers, and needs to at least break even so he doesn’t go bankrupt.

It’s pretty funny.

First he started charging $8 for a blue check without removing the old ones and only his most ardent sycophants paid him. So he came up with his masterstroke and announced he would be taking the blue checks away from the roughly 400,000 verified people, forcing their hand and raising over $3 million per month to start paying his rent again.

How’d it go? According to Twitter user Travis Brown—he may or may not be reputable source, it’s impossible to tell anymore because Musk got rid of the blue checks—among the previous blue check elite there was a net increase of 28 subscribers. His brilliant plan is on pace to raise $2,668 per year. Another masterstroke from history’s greatest super genius.



Dire Straits — “Money for Nothing”

One of the funniest things to me is what you get for your $8. The highlight is, of course, a badge informing everyone that you spent $8, which makes nothing but sense. But what else is there? Let’s look at the official sales pitch and go over each item.

Twitter's sales pitch for Twitter Blue, the contents of which are in the column.

This is real.

“Prioritized rankings in conversation and search” – Unless you’re a Reply Guy, this doesn’t matter, and nobody likes Reply Guys.

“See approximately twice as many Tweets between ads in your For You and Following timelines.” – So there are still ads, huh? Seems like an issue.

“Add bold and italic text in your Tweets” – All caps is a valid replacement for bold text and asterisks on either side works for italics.

“Post longer videos and 1080p video uploads” – If TikTok has taught us one thing it’s that people prefer extremely long videos on their social network.

“All the existing Blue features, including Edit Tweet, Bookmark Folders and early access to new features” – People use bookmarks enough to need folders to organize them? Who?

“Longer Tweets: Create Tweets, replies and Quotes up to 10,000 characters long.” – Absolutely nobody will read them. Nobody goes on Twitter to read a 2,000 word essay.

“Edit Tweet: Edit a Tweet up to 5 times within 30 minutes.” – I can still just delete and repost it.

“NFT Profile Pictures: Show your personal flair and set your profile picture to an NFT you own.” – The year 2021 called and they want their trend back. Also, I can make any NFT I want my profile picture whether I own it or not, they’re just JPEGs.

All for the low low price of $96 per year!



Meghan Trainor — “NO”

We’ve gone over how few blue check elite decided to pay to keep their largely useless icon. But many (myself included) didn’t just not buy it but openly mocked it. For example:

So who do they still have blue checks? Did they cave? No! Everyone’s least favorite beluga whale cursed by a wizard to live as a man is paying the $8 for them out of pocket! That’s sure to win them over, essentially lying to anyone who clicks on their new blue checks by claiming they paid.

I hope they sue.

Avenue Q — “Schadenfreude”

I really liked Twitter. I still want to, but South African Eric Trump is making that really difficult. I hate to see it slowly dissolve before my eyes.

That said, there is joy in it. I’m losing something I enjoy but I’m gaining the ability to watch a terrible man who was once respected for his intelligence and business acumen humiliate himself, ruin his reputation in every facet of life, slowly lose all his money and, best of all, get more and more miserable and desperate in the process. It’s just wonderful.

Apparently, I’ll give up a lot if it means the tragically rare chance to see a sociopathic billionaire publicly implode.



Follow publisher Daniel J. Willis and tweet column ideas to him at Twitter.com/BayAreaData, which is really him even though there’s no blue check.

No Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


Website by