The Horror Jokes Are Flying After Elon Musk’s Admission That He Paid For Stephen King’s Twitter Blue Checkmark

Elon Musk has some odd priorities, as evidenced by his decision to finally (after multiple false alarms) remove legacy Twitter verified checkmarks on 4/20, thereby stirring up even more chaos than his exploding SpaceX rocket would have done on its own. Musk made this choice in an attempt to pump up subscriptions for the $8+ Twitter Blue service, but few celebrities are biting, and that includes truly verified icons such as Taylor Swift and Beyoncé. Soon, however, a few famous types noticed that their checkmarks remained, and they grew vocal about this phenomenon.

This included Ice-T and Stephen King (together at last!), both of whom made clear that they never intended to pay for Twitter Blue. In particular, King previously wrote, “$20 a month to keep my blue check? F*ck that, they should pay me. If that gets instituted, I’m gone like Enron.”

The Cell author added, “It ain’t the money, it’s the principle of the thing.”

And speaking of cell phones, King now insists that he not only didn’t subscribe to Twitter Blue, but he also never handed over his phone number.

The mystery quickly grew less mysterious when Elon popped up in King’s replies: “You’re welcome namaste.”

Elon later admitted that he’d personally paid for some celebrities — but “[j]ust Shatner, LeBron and King” — to stay verified.

And that’s when the horror jokes began. Is Elon really King’s “number one fan”? Yikes. This also sounds like a horror story from King himself, or a really bad version of Sam Raimi’s Drag Me To Hell.

Then there’s the most likely possibility of all: Elon is aware of King’s opposition to being verified, so he’s trolling hard.

King has yet to respond, but he cannot be happy about this development.