What’s that going up in flames? Why, it’s Elon Musk’s reputation | Arwa Mahdawi

Just as SpaceX's Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly this month, Musk is a mess, too, thanks to Twitter's blue ticks

Elon Musk is a man of many talents including, it would seem, resurrecting people from the dead. Over the weekend, a number of notable but no-longer-alive figures, including Anthony Bourdain, Hugo Chavez and Jamal Khashoggi had blue checkmarks" suddenly appear on their dormant Twitter accounts. When you clicked on the checkmark you were informed that they'd provided their phone numbers to the platform and agreed to pay $8 a month to subscribe to Twitter Blue. The afterlife must be dire if people are signing up for Twitter's paid features from beyond the grave.

It wasn't just dead celebs being mysteriously verified. The rollout of Twitter Blue was a spectacular mess. Once upon a time, having a blue tick by your name was a status symbol: a sign someone at Twitter HQ thought you were notable" enough to verify. (Reader, I was not.) Then Musk came along, stripped people of their blue ticks, and said they'd only get the badge back if they paid up. Obviously only a complete loser would do that and the blue tick quickly became a scarlet letter. So when the checks mysteriously reappeared on the accounts of a number of high-profile - and very much alive - figures, including the author Stephen King and basketball star LeBron James, said figures swiftly announced that they hadn't paid for the badge and wouldn't be caught dead doing so. All of which would be incredibly embarrassing for Musk if he had any sense of shame. (Reader, he does not.)