Elon Musk Gives Popular X Users Back Their Blue Checks, But They’re Telling Him To Keep It

Apparently, the Twitter throttler-turned-X-terminator, Elon Musk, has given popular account holders back their blue checks, which indicates that the social media user is an influencer whose page gets a lot of traffic, not that they’re an honorary Crip. (Come on, I can’t be the only one who thought that.) That’s all the blue check ever meant until Must took over Twitter, changed the existing verification policy, which he called “corrupt and nonsensical,” removed the checks from popular accounts and offered to sell them back to the influencers who ran them for $8 per month through his Twitter Blue (now called X Premium) subscription. (Basically, Musk was out here trying to set up a Pay-Per-Clout platform. Ridiculous.) According to Variety, days after Musk implemented his stupid-ass policy change and yanked the blue check from thousands of accounts, he restored the checks to the accounts of big-name celebrities like Kim Kardashian, Justin Bieber, Beyoncé and Oprah Winfrey. Well, now—*clears throat*—you get a check, you get a check, EVERYBODY WHO HAD A CHECK BEFORE CAN GET THEIR CHECK BACK! Only a lot of prominent X users don’t appear to want it back now that it’s so closely associated with Musk. From Variety:

Now it seems Musk has restored the check marks for what X is calling “influential members of the community.” He first hinted at this policy in a post on March 27, writing that “going forward, all 𝕏 accounts with over 2,500 verified subscriber followers will get Premium features for free and accounts with over 5,000 will get Premium+ for free.”

It appears that the policy went into effect on Wednesday night, as many of these “influential” users took to X to clarify that they did not pay for a Premium subscription in order to restore their blue checks.

“What happened? I didn’t pay for this. I would NEVER pay for this,” “Community” actor Yvette Nicole Brown wrote on X. “When did the Blue Check mark start getting passed around again?!”

American Fiction star Jeffrey Wright is arguably one of the greatest and most criminally slept-on actors in contemporary cinema, but even he couldn’t act like he was excited about the return of his verification check or the notification letting him know he received a “complimentary subscription to X Premium” as “an influential member of the community on X.” “Translation: Pay $8? Kidding. Help me. But don’t say anything too free speechy about me or my Garbage Tower of Babel shitsite,” Wright tweeted. Wright and Brown weren’t alone in side-eyeing the blue check and wanting folks to know they didn’t spend a dime on it. In fact, check out the responses below to get a good look at just how much contempt people have for Musk, X, and the pitiful display of influencer gatekeeping that only tech dude-bros like Musk would ever come up with.

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