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> the people who had bleu checks before the $7.99 fee are addicted to attention, validation, and/or lording their bleu check status over others. This is not a

> the people who had bleu checks before the $7.99 fee are addicted to attention, validation, and/or lording their bleu check status over others. This is not a thing people regularly did? Old-school blue checks were never a status symbol, just a way Twitter used to denote "real" (meaning from-the-author-stated) and "fake" (real-humans-parodying-someone-else) accounts. The idea that they denoted status was a criticism born from misunderstanding and invented by far-right activists who mostly were never involved in Twitter socially during the first 10 years of it's run, and never really understood Twitter user's culture. 99% of people with "blue checks" were not doing some holier-than-thou dance or whatever. (It's also why none of these people are rushing to pay $8 for this newly-invented blue-as-status symbol thing -- it was never about status, these people are already often rich and famous or at least noteworthy in their field, they don't need some weirdo micro-validation from Twitter. Only a completely tone-deaf crazy person would pay money for Twitter in an attempt to gain validation or status.

zerocrates 4y ago
Despite it not being their stated purpose, they absolutely were a bit of a status symbol, though one that waned as more of them were given out of course. People routinely complained (both jokingly and seriously) about not being verified. It's not that rich and famous people needed the tiny bit of bonus (though some of them probably did), but that it was a marker of notability for less famous people. It's kind of like appearing in a crossword clue. The thing about putting the badge into Twitter Blue is that it makes it not a status symbol: both because it's just generally accessible (so even what little cachet you might agree it previously implied is now gone) and because for many you might see "enthusiastic about Elon Twitter" as an negative signal. There's a whole separate axis to this where it was clearly easier to get verified as a mainstream journalist than for many other kinds of professions or claims to fame (understandable both just under the basic "verification" goals and for presumably being pretty easy to actually verify as such things go). Much "anti-blue-check" sentiment is just the same familiar fights over the media, simply filtered through Twitter's systems.
- noirbot 4y ago
  Yea, for the folks I know who got blue checks in the sort of post "because you know someone at Twitter" zone, the whole exercise was more people joking or complaining about how random the whole thing was. I remember one time where half of the hosts of a show I follow got verified, but not the others, which was insane since the only possible verification that would be relevant would be that they were, in fact, the hosts of that show. They're a status symbol, but I don't think almost anyone really cared about outside it of people who didn't have them and felt like they should. I'm not sure I ever saw a sort of "why would I trust you if you don't have a blue check" sentiment.

zerocrates 4y ago

Despite it not being their stated purpose, they absolutely were a bit of a status symbol, though one that waned as more of them were given out of course. People routinely complained (both jokingly and seriously) about not being verified. It's not that rich and famous people needed the tiny bit of bonus (though some of them probably did), but that it was a marker of notability for less famous people. It's kind of like appearing in a crossword clue. The thing about putting the badge into Twitter Blue is that it makes it not a status symbol: both because it's just generally accessible (so even what little cachet you might agree it previously implied is now gone) and because for many you might see "enthusiastic about Elon Twitter" as an negative signal. There's a whole separate axis to this where it was clearly easier to get verified as a mainstream journalist than for many other kinds of professions or claims to fame (understandable both just under the basic "verification" goals and for presumably being pretty easy to actually verify as such things go). Much "anti-blue-check" sentiment is just the same familiar fights over the media, simply filtered through Twitter's systems.

noirbot 4y ago
Yea, for the folks I know who got blue checks in the sort of post "because you know someone at Twitter" zone, the whole exercise was more people joking or complaining about how random the whole thing was. I remember one time where half of the hosts of a show I follow got verified, but not the others, which was insane since the only possible verification that would be relevant would be that they were, in fact, the hosts of that show. They're a status symbol, but I don't think almost anyone really cared about outside it of people who didn't have them and felt like they should. I'm not sure I ever saw a sort of "why would I trust you if you don't have a blue check" sentiment.