Death Of The Blue Check
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One of the more bizarre but illuminating aspects of Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter has been the panic over his changes to the blue check. Here is CNN reporting on it as if it is a natural disaster. Here is a Sara and Rebecca over at Axios hissing and snarling at the new policy as if it is a crucifix. Here are two airheads at MSNBC cheering the SpaceX explosion as they issue a fatwah against Musk over his new polices. This jock-sniffing weirdo at Slate has declared Musk a business failure.
The reason for the panic is Musk has gone ahead with his plan to make the blue check into a badge of access, rather than a symbol of moral goodness. If you want extra features on the Twitter platform, like longer posts and the ability to edit a tweet, you pay Musk for Twitter Blue, his premium service. Premium members get a blue check next to their fake name on their profile. This means all of the blue checks will be losing their blue check unless they pony up for the premium service.
To a normal person, this seems reasonable. Twitter is a business, and a business needs to earn money. Gab has been issuing badges to their premium users and their donors for a long time. Many sites have switched to a pay wall for commenting. If you want to comment on a post, you have to pay for the privilege. Many people hate this, as they have been conditioned to think everything online is free. Everyone becomes a communist when it comes to paying for content.
This is not the reason for the blue check panic. People forget that the whole point of the blue check was to prevent people from using your online identity to either ruin your brand or exploit people in your name. You provided identification to Twitter so they could verify that you were the real you and then they put that tick mark next to your name so everyone could know the moron behind those idiotic tweets was you and not some other moron pretending to be you.
It did not take long for the activists to turn this mundane feature into something like the star from Dr. Suess story, the Star-Bellied Sneetches. You see, the good people were willing to post online under their real name, so they were happy to submit their ID to the Twitter police for inspection. The bad people with their heretical ideas and penchant for blasphemy, posted under fake names. They hid in the shadows, ashamed of their actions, because they are the unclean!
Of course, like the Dr. Suess story, it could not end there as plenty of bad people were willing to show face and get the blue check. Soon the blue check was revoked from the bad people as a way to show the world they were bad. The blue check was now a badge of moral purity. The blue checks were inside the hive walls, while the no checks were the undifferentiated other outside the walls. The blue checks were now the priestly class of the Twitter platform.
It did not stop there. Twitter rigged their system so that the blue checks would get more attention and more followers. Musk has not confirmed it, but he has hinted at the possibility that the large bot army controlled by Twitter was used to artificially elevate blue checks over no checks. RamZPaul saw his engagement and follower count spike after Musk took over and deleted the old rules. Many no checks saw their follower counts double in weeks after Musk took control.
In effect, Twitter created a massive online safe space for the blue checks where they not only could avoid “violent language” but also have the robots reassured them through artificially boosting their engagement. In other words, they created an online version of the world they imagine is possible in real life. In fact, much of the tech censorship regime assumes that they can create a narrative so powerful that it changes physical reality itself.
That is why they are in a panic over the new policy. This barbarian has entered the temple and stripped them of their status. Worse yet, he is auctioning off their privilege to the great unwashed. Many of the former blue checks are carrying on like they have been physically assaulted by Musk. Since they are sure their narratives can be made real if you silence the opposition, they no doubt think what Musk is doing to Twitter foreshadows a new holocaust in the real world.
This strikes normal people as completely nuts, which is why normal people struggle to accept that these people really do believe this stuff. When the scolds claim that your speech is violence, but their violence is speech, they are not lying. They concocted the term “stochastic violence” to describe it. The former blue checks howling in agony are experiencing real pain. For them, the holocaust of the blue checks on Twitter is more real to them than physical reality.
What is happening at Twitter is a microcosm for what must happen in American society if we are to avoid disaster. The managerial class is the blue check army made flesh, and they must be stripped of their status by the real owners of society. Maybe they get lucky, and the rich guys follow the lead of Musk and begin taking back control of society by purging their organizations of these false priests. If you are hoping for a soft landing, the Twitter example is the place to start.
The Twitter example also shows how difficult it is to root out these people once they sink their roots into an organization. It is like casting out a demon. Musk may eventually have to take Twitter through bankruptcy in order to save it. Scaling this up to society as a whole will require far more than a billionaire shit-poster. Even so, it does provide a path to avoiding the great disaster that comes from allowing these spiteful mutants to run wild through the culture.
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