Elon Musk Settles On $8 A Month For Twitter Blue
Tired of feeling insignificant, impotent, and, let’s be frank, ugly, but don’t have $44 billion dollars to throw around? No? How about $20? Surely you must have $20 laying around somewhere. Have you asked your mom? Maybe she could help. Still no?! Jesus, OK. How about $8? Because Elon Musk is really trying here. As it turns out, free speech ain’t free so Elon’s been trying to find a way to monetize it by selling blue checks as a perk for joining Twitter Blue, a subscription service that Elon seems to think will upend the “current lords and peasants system” by allowing everyone the opportunity to become an edgelord for just $8 dollars a month. And that’s his final offer! For less than the cost of a cup of coffee (was in the 80s), you can save yourself from the utter and complete humiliation of being the type of person who would spend $8 a month to share a blue check with intellectual luminaries such as Meghan Markle’s estranged sister Samantha Markle and The United States of America’s estranged former president Donald Trump. You see, Elon did happen to have $44 billion on hand, so he’s all set. But the rest of you uggos are really making things difficult for him.
Elon’s original idea for making up for lost advertising dollars by bumping the cost of Twitter Blue, a preexisting service that gave users the “ability to read ad-free articles, undo or edit tweets (in some countries), and customize your navigation bar” from $4.99 to $20 a month, went over like a lead balloon (alarming coming from a supposed aerospace engineer). So he’s dropped his price and added permission to complain about Twitter into the plan.
To all complainers, please continue complaining, but it will cost $8
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 2, 2022
Fun Fact! Elon learned all about negging from that time he auditioned to replace Mystery as the host for the 2007 reality shows The Pick Up Artist. According to The Verge:
Elon Musk has announced that a new version of Twitter Blue will include some sort of verification accessible for $8 per month in the US, with the price “adjusted by country proportionate to purchasing power parity.” He announced the shake-up of the premium service by saying that “Twitter’s current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark is bullshit.”
Musk also says that the service will get you:
- Priority in replies, mentions, and search, which Musk argues is “essential to defeat spam/scam”
- Ability to post long video and audio
- Half as many ads
- And “paywall bypass for publishers willing to work with us”
Musk hasn’t announced when the new pricing and feature set will go into effect, but currently, the in-app documentation for Blue is for the old system. Musk also says that Blue will give the company “a revenue stream to reward content creators,” but he hasn’t shared details of what those rewards for creators might look like in practice.
Elon still hasn’t revealed what the verification process would look like, or what the criteria would be, but since he himself is verified and is presumably OK with spending the $8 a month to keep his blue check, we can assume there will be no swimsuit or talent portions of the competition. Which is great news for Samantha. According to The Independent:
Meghan Markle’s half-sister, Samantha Markle, has thanked Elon Musk for allowing her to return to Twitter.
Ms Markle claimed to have been “unjustly targeted and shut down by bots and trolls falsely reporting my account”.
“I believe that this will be a historically positive change for our social and economic world,” she told the website The Steeple Times.
“I’m glad that Elon Musk is going to save free speech,” she said. “We can all have our opinions, and disagree. Elon Musk wants to make it fair for both the Right and the Left equally. Differing opinions and controversy make people think and grow.”
And while Samantha is back, she’s not blue-checked yet, so don’t be fooled by any misinformation she might post as a peasant. Aaaaaaaand in the time it took me to write the previous sentence, she has already locked her account, so it must be going great for her. As for Donald, Elon’s not quite ready for all that smoke just yet. CNN reports:
Elon Musk indicated on Wednesday that the Twitter account of former President Donald Trump will not be restored ahead of the US midterm elections next week, answering one of the biggest unknowns following his takeover of the social media company.
Musk confirmed early Wednesday morning that “Twitter will not allow anyone who was de-platformed for violating Twitter rules back on platform until we have a clear process for doing so, which will take at least a few more weeks.” The billionaire Twitter owner had previously said he would start a “content moderation council” and that no major content decisions would be made until it was in place.
Trump, who previously used Twitter to make news, attack critics and set the agenda in DC, has said he is glad Twitter is now in “sane hands” following the Musk takeover but claimed he would not be returning to the platform. Instead, he plans to stay on his own social network, Truth Social. Trump had tens of millions more followers on Twitter than he does on Truth Social.
I honestly don’t see the appeal of paying $8 a month to participate in the downfall of society when you can watch unfold in front of you in real-time for free. But then again, I’ve never been ugly, so what do I know?
Pic: BauerGriffin/INSTARimages.com/Cover Images