The only reason people are buying a checkmark is because of the cultural relevance the checkmark had. If they just rolled out a "Twitter Plus" subscription and

The only reason people are buying a checkmark is because of the cultural relevance the checkmark had. If they just rolled out a "Twitter Plus" subscription and gave users a different looking symbol, it would have nose dived even harder. Now that cultural relevance has been muddled, now any random person can get one. So it's lost value for people who actually need verification as a security / fraud feature and for journalists and for the people paying for one.