Comedy isn’t dead on Twitter. If anything, it is at its best. Thanks to Elon Musk’s terrible new verification system, anyone can pay $8 to get verified, change their screen name and profile picture to resemble someone else’s, and then go ahead and impersonate and make fun of literally anyone—including brands, celebrities, and even the Pope. Technically, if you label your account “parody,” this is supposed to be allowed, though that is definitely not going to stay and we’ve already seen some of those correctly labeled accounts getting suspended. In the meantime, it has made for a great time on Twitter.
Because honestly, trying to navigate what is actually news and what is someone being funny has proven to be a bit complicated. You can easily click on the verification symbol if you’re confused (or install a hilarious browser extension) and see whether it says they are a “Twitter Blue” subscriber versus someone verified for their notoriety or work. But all of this still has a lot of people confused, especially at first glance, by what is going on.
This tweet from @Fred_Delicious though is pretty accurate to how things are going.
Everyone is vulnerable to the comedic attacks of the internet, especially in terms of call-outs we’ve all just been sitting on. Like the fact that the American Girl doll Felicity owned slaves.
It has pretty much been absolute chaos. We have Pope Francis fighting with Martin Luther, the former Pope John Paul I, and then Francis said that he was popping it in France.
Think politicians are safe? Come on, you know that’s not possible. We have tweets from “George W. Bush” admitting to war crimes, with former Prime Minister “Tony Blair” quote-tweeting it in agreement because this is just … ripe for chaos!
Think things couldn’t possibly get any funnier? Think again. We have “O.J. Simpson” admitting to … “it” (you know what the “it” is) and “Dave Chappelle” admitting he was wrong about everything! Oh also “Rudy Giuliani” thinks that Nancy Pelosi’s “thangs” are “thangin” so at least there’s that.
And my own personal favorite, a tweet from Satan himself.
This is bad for the world but great for comedy.
We all knew this verification service that doesn’t require anyone to verify their actual identity was going to be a mess but boy oh boy is it better than I thought. I was afraid of those impersonating people as a way of harassing individuals or spreading disinformation and instead (or maybe just in addition), we just got a sea of people making fun of politicians and companies and that I am fine with. All of these accounts are getting banned (and earning Musk $8 a pop in the process) but so far, there’s no shortage of more accounts taking their place.
It’s truly and honestly so funny. I’m sure someone—many someones!—on the Twitter side of things thought to themselves “This is going to end badly” but I do not think that person was Elon Musk. So knowing that this is all happening because of his weird perception of blue checks being a “lord and peasants” system, and that he’s now scrambling to delete the “fake” accounts he set into motion, is priceless. And again, I’m sure this is not going to stay for that long if it is this much chaos after one day but man, do I love seeing everyone willing to pay $8 to make some jokes.
Let comedy reign free, Elon.
(image: Marvel Entertainment)
