Back in October when Elon Musk bought Twitter, Stephen King went on a bit of a Twitter rant against the new system of purchasing your blue verification checkmark. Musk’s excuse was, “revenue stream to reward content creators”.
Everyone was in a bit of an uproar at this new approach. But did that stop Musk? Nope. Every well-known celebrity on Twitter lost their check marks if they didn’t pay the fee… except the king of horror, Stephen King, NBA basketball legend Lebron James, and Star Trek superstar, William Shatner.
This is how it all went down:
There has been a mixture of response– mostly negative… but within the bookish side, you can find a mixture of humor, disappointment, and farewells for the blue checkmarks. Here are our favorite reactions from the bookish world.
Some used humor to cope with loss of the blue checkmark:
Neil Gaiman was pretty peeved, and perhaps it’s with good reason:
Margaret E. Atwood took it with grace. Are we surprised?
Joyce Carol Oates was having NONE of it! She used art and her words to convey her emotions.
And well… Irvine Welsh said this:
Are some of the tweets a whee melodramatic? Yes! But us bookish folks are eating it up!
I do think it’s unfair that a few users were given a pass… but hey, maybe Musk wants to appease some of his personal favs. What are your thoughts about the new ways of obtaining a blue check mark? What are your thoughts about King keeping his blue checkmark?
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