Dear Twitter, or X I think, you had a heck of a run but now I know it's really about to end.
The bird app begin rapidly approaching death when Elon Musk, who is currently the richest guy in the world purchased in in October of 2022. His first order of business of was to strip verified users and news outlets of their blue checks in effort to get everyone to subscribe to Twitter Blue, a relatively worthless $7.99 per month service the app offers. I don't mean worthless in regards to the functions it offers; it is worthless because it is not cool. Social media should be cool. Being selected to have a blue check meant that you accomplished something at some point that made you notable – a person with a certain amount of influence that people should be able to trust. Not trust in what you tweeted about, but the ability for people to trust that those tweets actually came from you, not a bot – and this was cool. Working hard enough to have your account be selected for verification was cool. You know what's not cool? Paying for it.
