Twitter Blue is More Popular than I Had Thought

This could very well be the stupidest person on the face of the earth. Perhaps we should shoot him.*

You know the deal, you pay $8/month and verify your phone number, and you get a blue check mark.

It's so popular that Kobe Bryant, Chadwick Bozeman, Andan Kashoggi, Anthony Bourdain,  Michael Jackson, Kirstie Alley, Barbara Walters, and Norm McDonald have signed up.

I did not think that the program would be so popular dead celebrities would be signing up.

Oops!

Chadwick Boseman, Kobe Bryant and Anthony Bourdain are the latest celebrities to be verified under Twitter Blue, the social media platform’s paid-subscription service that allows anyone to get a blue check mark by their display name if they pay $8 a month and confirm their phone number.

Except the actor, athlete and celebrity chef died years ago, before Twitter Blue even existed.

Their accounts — and those of at least a dozen other dead celebrities — now feature a blue check, which, if hovered over, displays the message: “This account is verified because they are subscribed to Twitter Blue and verified their phone number.”

It was just the latest in a series of changes under new owner Elon Musk, who purchased the company for $44 billion in October. Since then, Musk has terminated more than 75 percent of the company’s employees, changed the way users’ timelines worked and, on Thursday, removed check marks from thousands of legacy verified accounts belonging to celebrities, journalists, politicians and others.

But it quickly became clear over the weekend that some high-profile individuals still had the check mark, which is now available as part of an $8 a month subscription, even if they said they weren’t paying for it.

………

Several high-profile people who said they had automatically gotten Twitter Blue complained that the check mark, previously a status symbol, now felt like a reprimand.

Model and television personality Chrissy Teigen tweeted, “wait I’m crying they’re giving them for punishment now !!?!!” When Jon Favreau, co-host of the left-wing political podcast “Pod Save America,” bemoaned getting one, Teigen advised him that changing his account handle would make the check mark disappear.

Among the deceased public figures listed Sunday as Twitter Blue subscribers were two performers — Michael Jackson, who died in 2009, and Malcolm James McCormick, known professionally as Mac Miller, who died in 2018 — as well as John McCain, the Republican senator from Arizona who also died in 2018. The accounts of actress Kirstie Alley, TV host Barbara Walters and Linkin Park singer Chester Bennington, all of whom have died, also had blue check marks.

………

Some questioned whether giving check marks to deceased public figures or celebrities who have not paid for the emoji could violate federal and state laws prohibiting defamation, false insinuations that someone has endorsed a product or service, or use of a person’s likeness for publicity without their consent.

………

Many Twitter users pointed to the blue check mark on the account of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist and Washington Post contributing columnist who was assassinated in 2018, in what U.S. intelligence agencies say was a hit ordered by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

“This is obscene,” said Mohamad Bazzi, an associate professor of journalism at New York University.

Of course this is obscene.  What part of, "Elon Musk," don't you understand?

Seriously, the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir™ must be the most overrated man in America.

^*What, you've never seen Ruthless People? Great movie.