You know what matters less than a Twitter verification symbol now? Having one with an “Official” verification underneath it—a new system in Elon Musk’s Twitter overhaul that lasted for about an hour before it was instantly killed because I guess those on the Twitter side of things realized how absolutely ridiculous it was.
For whatever reason, Elon Musk thinks that the blue checkmark system is beneficial to the lords and not the peasants. First of all, as I’ve said before, verification is simply just to prove that I am who I say I am, as someone who has a very public job. It’s why it is awarded to celebrities and news organizations and, by extension, journalists. Having people pay to have a blue check—as is Musk’s plan—without any of the requirements to earn that check makes it … useless.
And it seems that the Twitter team realized this and briefly added another level of verification for those in the public eye: an “official” label, effectively rendering the existing “verified” check meaningless and redundant. It looked horrible and cluttered and lasted all of two seconds before it got killed.
Esther Crawford tweeted out the new way to distinguish between Twitter Blue subscribers and blue checkmarks and official accounts, and it was just a new checkmark underneath the other checkmark that says “official,” and actually LOL. And clearly mocking it worked, because it’s gone.
In the thread, Crawford goes on to explain that there is no ID-verification for Twitter Blue, Twitter’s paid version (so how is this stopping any bots, Elon!?), and instead that the “official” check was to be the real, new verification checkmark, with Twitter Blue users getting the original verification checks that would be effectively meaningless, making that new “official” check basically feel like the same system that was in place when Twitter first began verifying accounts and opened it to everyone apply.
Were you official official?
According to the help site for Twitter, if you were previously verified, you’re now part of the “legacy” program, which means you don’t lose your verification as they implement their new paid verification system, but you also might not have fallen under the official official label, either. So having a blue check might signify that you were a Twitter Blue subscriber, or that you had previously been verified but not necessarily a paid subscriber, while only an “official” check would mean you are now verified—a totally nonsense system. Because I am me, I went to see what individuals had gotten the “official” badge, and so far it was celebrities like Chris Evans, Kerry Washington, and Pedro Pascal, as well as some organizations and news outlets, though not popular individual journalists.
Again, it was killed. Why? Probably because Musk doesn’t like people making fun of him and that’s all Twitter was doing, but hey! According to him, this are going to be messy going forward, and we’re supposed to just roll with it.
Personally, I’m just so excited to actually be grandfathered in to the Legacy Blue check club. It makes me feel like I did in high school when everyone else in my neighborhood who was a year younger than me had to go to the new high school but because I was a junior, I got to stay at the cool high school. Shoutout to Marvin Ridge!
Overall, this doesn’t really bode well for the future if this was this messy right out the gate, but for one fleeting moment, we all mocked the gray “official” check, and it was glorious.
(image: Marvel Entertainment, Twitter, and Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images)
