Blue checkmarks are allegedly disappearing on Twitter tomorrow unless you pay for them, per a rumor spread by Twitter’s owner and effective CEO:
What does this mean? Well, it’s one of two things:
Either this works out really well for Twitter financially and everyone agrees to not make fun of each other for buying access to engagement, something that’s a big deal if you work in, say, NIT blogging, or there’s one afternoon of mild hysterics over clear hoaxes followed by things being exactly the way they’ve been online. In the event it’s the latter, here’s some advice for the blue checks coming down to our level:
You’re Anonymous Now
Really. It’s true. It’s like you’re just on a burner account. You can say anything you want. Let it rip. How will they trace it back to you?
You Are a Nobody
This ties back into the anonymity piece, but the reason it’s going to be like you’re on a burner account is that your own actual worth as a person was tied to that blue checkmark, and with it gone? Your worth is gone as well. You used to matter to people. Now, you don’t. (If they really go away, that is.)
You Can Make a Broad Cultural Stand Over the Act of Not Paying Eight Dollars a Month For a Service Some People Prefer and Others Don’t
Yeah, sure, go for it, buddy. Your tweet bragging about how you haven’t caved to the person you think is completely destroying society because he *checks notes* acts like a 14-year-old with trillions of dollars is the tweet that’s going to end the culture war, and it’s going to end it with you standing amid the ruins of your rival, completely victorious. Fire that bad boy off.
There Is No More Fame
Fame itself is now a thing of the past. We are all one in the unverified proletariat masses.
You Don’t Have to Associate With That Verified Guy With 278 Followers Anymore
That dude who signed up for his college newspaper, got verified through it, and never even wrote an article? Yeah, you can let that guy go now. I know. It’s always bothered you. You’re free. He is back in the void, and from there he cannot hurt you.
Names Themselves No Longer Exist
And with them, our very identities are gone forever. For a while, they cared if you changed your Twitter name, but now even that doesn’t matter, because names are relics of an identified past. In this new future, we are referred to by the absence of identity, the same we all possess.
You’re Still an Expert on the Novel Coronavirus
Oh, don’t worry. All that pandemic expertise you’ve loved sharing is still entirely valid.
