Here’s an idea: maybe don’t haggle with the King of Horror on Halloween, of all days. New Twitter overlord Elon Musk must have missed this memo (he was probably busy firing someone or spreading baseless conspiracy theories).
In response to Twitter potentially charging $20 a month for verified blue checkmarks, author Stephen King tweeted, “$20 a month to keep my blue check? F*ck that, they should pay me. If that gets instituted, I’m gone like Enron.” He’s been waiting 20 years to use “gone like Enron.” Anyway, King’s tweet caught the attention of Musk, who pleaded, “We need to pay the bills somehow! Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers. How about $8?” He added that “I will explain the rationale in longer form before this is implemented. It is the only way to defeat the bots & trolls,” which is the kind of thing you say when you have no plan to defeat the bots & trolls.
$20 a month to keep my blue check? Fuck that, they should pay me. If that gets instituted, I’m gone like Enron.
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) October 31, 2022
King did not respond to Musk (who changed his Twitter bio to “Twitter Complaint Hotline Operator”), but he did write back to a follower who told him that he could afford $20 a month. “It ain’t the money, it’s the principal of the thing,” he tweeted. The good news: you get a 10 percent discount every time you watch Elon’s Rick and Morty episode.