It’s no secret that Elon Musk can give back blue badges at will if he wants to. And that’s exactly what he did to Rian Johnson, as he prepares himself to be unverified thanks to Twitter’s purge. The CEO used his power to ruin the Knives Out director’s newest status update, and eventually was left with laughs.
Johnson prepared his Twitter account’s entrance to unverified status with the words “unverified and dangerous” in his bio. But rather than have his account be part of the hundreds of other celebrities to have no checkmarks, Musk decided to leave a small blue badge next to his account. The director noticed it, and had a good laugh before it was removed once and for all.
After the checkmarks were pulled from accounts, it seems like celebrities had no interest to pay for Twitter Blue subscriptions. Some were even vocal about their excitement to become unverified. At the same time, Musk has made it known that he paid for Twitter Blue subscriptions to three users who were very vocal about the changes, including Stephen King.
Despite sitting at around a million followers, Johnson isn’t part of the few celebrities that got their badges back for free after the decision to pull legacy checkmarks was met with backlash. The company pulled a 180 and gave them back to some celebrities with a nine-figure follower count. Sadly, this meant that other notable figures like Elmo and the Sesame Street gang are not eligible to claim their free badges.