Like it or not, Musk has worked hard at tying Twitter to his personal brand since he took over. Consider that Twitter has no PR department outside of Elon himse

Like it or not, Musk has worked hard at tying Twitter to his personal brand since he took over. Consider that Twitter has no PR department outside of Elon himself. It's not as closely tied as something like Tesla, but still if you don't like Elon or his politics you're less likely to pay for verification. This means that the checkmark now has an associated political/social connotation. No it's not 100%, but it's there. Edit: This applies in reverse as well. There are definitely fans/admirers of Elon who subscribed immediately as a show of support. But I admit all of this is anecdata, I don't have numbers on how widespread it is.