The Elon Follies, continued

Welcome back my friends to the sh*tshow that never ends.

A rocket allegedly shaped like a large marijuana cigarette. Source: Midjourney.

Three things happened to Elon Musk last Thursday, two of them bad.

1. He blew up a rocket [1]

2. He blew up Twitter

3. He burned a greet beeg spliff, mon [2]

It was also a bad day for the person who owned this minivan, which got hit by debris from the 'rapid unscheduled disassembly' of that rocket.

That video captures, better than anything I can write, what Elon has done to Twitter.

(Yes, I know: a significant number of my readers don't 'get' Twitter. They don't understand what it's for or why people care about it. They have happily lived their lives without ever knowing what a retweet or a hashtag or a ratio is, and I say, more power to them.

For you, dear Twitterless reader, I offer this video montage of adorable kittens, which you may enjoy while whoever is left reads the rest of this screed.)

Check and mate

Elon's latest stunt involves the de-checkification of Twitter's notables — mostly celebrities, professional athletes, politicians, organizations, and the wretches of humanity (aka, journalists like yours truly).

People whose identities were verified had a little blue check next to their names. This apparently pissed off Elon and his army of flying monkeys, who saw it as elitist — another example of the Woke Mob making life difficult for hard-working billionaires by... doing something bad, no one is sure what, exactly.

Basically, Elon opened up blue checks to anyone willing to pony up $8 a month and submit their phone and credit card numbers for validation. [3] But anyone who was previously verified and declined lost their check. That's a not-terribly-subtle variation on the classic: "Such a nice little check you got there, shame if anything happened to it."

Many many many people declined. In fact, a movement quickly developed across Twitter to ban anyone who paid for a blue check. This would immediately reduce their value to Twitter's all-powerful and largely inscrutable algorithms. Fairly or not, the blue check became a proxy for a red MAGA and/or tinfoil hat.

What did Elon do? He unilaterally restored the blue checks to some (but not all) accounts with a million or more followers. Even dead people. If you visited the Twitter accounts of Michael Jackson or Anthony Bourdain, for example, it would claim they'd paid for that check from their graves.

And then you had people like Stephen King and LeBron James and many others saying, "No, actually, I didn't pay $8 for that blue check, fuck you very much." Great advertising for your little shake down, eh Elon?

When you've lost George Costanza, there’s no recovering.

You'd think a guy running five companies (six?) would have better things to do with his time. Maybe if Elon paid attention to more important matters his rockets wouldn't blow up? Just sayin.

Bye bye birdy

The reason Twitter is important is because it's become the Internet's unofficial, mostly accidental town square. It's where any blowhard can, well, blow hard. [4] But it's also hugely popular with journalists, as both a way to spread the news and to learn it. And, because journalists are there, it's also popular among politicians, celebrities, demagogues, conspiracy nut baskets, and anyone else desperate for attention.

Blue checks didn't exist until 2009, after Twitter was sued for its inability to police impersonator accounts. [5] They quickly turned into a major asset for the network.

Verified celebrities brought an appeal to Twitter that was previously missing. Knowing that you're talking with the real William Shatner or Stephen King is a whole other experience than talking with someone who's probably a fake William Shatner or Stephen King. It provided fans a feeling of proximity to fame they couldn't get anywhere else. And yes, such celebs could use Twitter to promote their latest project, but that was just one tiny cog in their publicity machines.

They didn't need Twitter, Twitter needed them. And Twitter still needs them, apparently. Hence the mass blue check resurrection for many of the most popular accounts. [6]

Them blue check blues

I got my blue check sometime in 2014. I was working at Yahoo Tech then and was asked to get verified by somebody who said it would bring our stories greater visibility. I was able to transfer the check to my personal email after Yahoo and I parted ways. [7]

Frankly, I don't think the blue check bought me a damned thing, but I have to admit I liked seeing it up there next to my name. [8] Mostly I got snide remarks about it from people whose political persuasions I do not share, along the lines of "if a blue check says it, it can't be true," or "I've never heard of this guy." [9]

So the loss of the check isn't terribly important to me. But the loss of the Internet's town square to some megalomaniac whose sole goal in life (besides maybe building condos on Mars) is to be the world's biggest troll, is something much harder to restore.

Kittens or Twitter? Vote for your favorite below.

[1] And also thoroughly borked the launch pad (because he failed to follow basic safety protocols) and showered dust and debris all over the nearby town of Port Isabel, six miles from the launch site. After the rocket blew up SpaceX employees cheered, because at least the damned thing got into the air before going KA-BOOM. The lesson here: Set small goals.

[2] For the lawyers in the audience: No, I did not see Elon Musk burn one on 4/20. But he is strangely obsessed with Stoner Christmas. The man once violated SEC rules just to make a 420 joke about taking Tesla private. So he clearly picked April 20th, 2023 to shoot off a rocket and wreak revenge on the blue check/woke mob for a reason.

[3] Unless you are a large organization, in which case you get the privilege of paying $1000 a month to get a gold check. Last time I looked, ABC, CNN, and NBC had ponied up, but not Fox News. I guess when your business model is lying to your audience to keep them happy, it doesn't matter where the fake news comes from.

[4] Unless you tell people that injecting bleach will prevent COVID, claim that space lasers changed votes in key precincts in Arizona, scream that the Jews (Blacks, Muslims, Amway) are taking over the world, or otherwise act like an insufferable asshole. All town squares have rules, ya know.

[5] The plaintiff in that suit? Then Chicago White Sox manager Tony LaRussa.

[6] Wasn't the whole idea of opening up blue checks to fight elitism? Could have sworn I heard that somewhere.

[7] That was a thing on the Internet for like five minutes.

[8] Like I was finally a real boy, or something.

[9] That's OK. I hadn't heard of them either. But I'd bet $100 those guys were the first to sign up for Elon's Twitter Blue.