Elon Musk Twitter Blue

If you paid Elon Musk to get a blue tick on Twitter, it’s time to sort your life out

Twitter’s on fire and you chose to give seven quid to a billionaire


I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Twitter is going up in flames. Since Elon Musk took ownership of Twitter, there’s been, as my northern Grandma would say, “trouble at mill.” Thousands of abrupt firings, senior walk outs last night and the controversial introduction of Twitter Blue – a subscription service that instantly gives a hallowed blue verified tick to anyone who’s willing to pay one of the richest men in the world £6.99. If you care so much about getting a verified tick on Twitter so badly that you’d resort to Elon Musk and Twitter Blue, then prepare to be told how much you need to get a grip of your life.

RIP blue tick

I have never had my Twitter account verified, but I make no secret of the fact I spent most of the last few years really hoping to get one. I’ve got a decent following and written for several verified publications, and I feel like Twitter acknowledging me as worthy of one would have been the cherry-on-top validation I needed for my career journey. It sounds stupid, and it’s nothing major, but I did want one.

I applied several times and got rejected, lol. It is what it is, and I respect my former Twitter overlords judgement when going through their now defunct application process. I was annoyed with my friends yesterday when they said they were expecting me to have signed up to Twitter Blue in order get verified. I was shocked that, as a vocal critic of Musk’s Twitter takeover, they ever thought I’d contribute to a new system I stand against in every way I possibly can. “But I thought the goal was to get @harrisonjbrock verified!” They said. They failed to realise that the blue tick is now redundant.

Perhaps out of embarrassment, but a little known fact about me is that I play a lot of Fortnite. I would like to reiterate that I’m a 26-year-old adult and not a 12-year-old who’s stolen a relative’s laptop to moonlight as a journalist – I know Fortnite is the mockery of the gaming world, but I’m really good at it. Anyway – in Fortnite, characters are known as skins, and these skins rotate in and out of an item shop. Some skins are now extremely rare, and haven’t been back to the shop in over a year in some cases. This means people who have that skin in game get to boast about it, and people want the skin because it’s rare.

Eventually, the game puts the skin back in the shop. Everyone goes mad and buys it, you see your game lobbys full of a skin that once was rare but is now inescapable. Soon enough, no one uses that skin anymore. Because who cares about it when everyone has it? Where’s its worth? Sound familiar?

If anyone in the world can buy a verified blue tick for less than a large meal at McDonald’s, what is its value? What does it mean? It means nothing. It doesn’t mean that you’re someone needed to be verified because of your job or public profile, brand or business. It means you’re willing to contribute to the worst shakeup Twitter’s ever had.

Are you not… embarrassed?

If you click on the blue tick of, say, Madonna – you will be told that her blue tick is there because that account is owned by someone notable in government, news, entertainment etc. If you click on the blue tick of that silly meme account you can’t remember why you even follow, you’ll be told that blue tick’s there because the account is subscribed to Twitter Blue.

If you are the kind of person who is fine with giving extra cash to Elon Musk, the richest man on planet earth, for a meaningless blue tick – then perhaps you deserve the chaos Twitter is currently in as penance for your sheer obnoxious narcissism. I know that sounds harsh, but if someone like me who’s wanted a blue tick for as long as I’ve had a Twitter account can look at all this and never even consider it what on earth makes you think it’s worthwhile?

Well, erm… Twitter Blue has gone

As I was writing this, the feature and function to subscribe to the Twitter Blue service for your Elon Musk blue tick has been removed. You can no longer pay a billionaire seven quid for some personal, extremely futile, validation. After a tirade of parody accounts getting blue ticks and causing global Twitter chaos, it seems this extremely idiotic blip in Twitter’s history is redundant before that £6.99 left the pending transactions of the hapless chumps that signed up for it.

Do the Elon Musk conforming Twitter Blue users get a refund? Will their blue ticks remain? What happens going forward? Will Twitter see out the weekend or will we all be posting eulogies to the accounts we’ve spent over a decade live tweeting, memeing and making memories on? Time will only tell – but one things for sure: If you ever gave Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, seven quid of your hard earned money in a cost of living crisis, hang your head in cringe-filled shame.

@harrisonjbrock

Related stories recommended by this writer:

• What is Wakey Wines? Everything you need to know about the TikTok off-licence selling Prime

• A deep dive into the relationship timeline of Paul Mescal and Phoebe Bridgers

• So here’s why people are hating on Eden Harvey and why she’s deleted her TikTok account

Featured image credit to Britta Pederson on Shutterstock before edits.