April 20 means a lot of things to a lot of people. And outside of the obviously very funny commemoration of smoking weed with your friends, none of them are all that funny. So it does seem fitting that that rapscallion of a businessman Elon Musk would declare 4/20 the “final date” for legacy blue check marks.
In a rare tweet that didn’t include a laughing emoji, a poop emoji, the word “interesting…”, conspiratorial gobbledygook, transphobia, or all of the above, Elon Musk declared, “Final date for removing legacy Blue checks is 4/20.”
Musk’s an old hat at recycling this classic numerical knee slapper. Like every great comedian, which Musk is, he learned to reuse his best material again and again and again and again and again until you’ve paid $44 billion for a website that everyone jokes “is free.” In 2018, Musk tweeted that he was considering taking his publicly traded car company with a steering wheel that flies off while you’re driving privately for $420 per share. The enfant terrible stuck it to society with that one, and the SEC forced him to pay $20 million for misleading investors. Reuters reports that “Musk said he rounded the price up to $420 because he had recently learned about the number’s significance in marijuana culture and thought his girlfriend would find it funny, ‘which admittedly is not a great reason to pick a price.’” In terms only Musk can understand, $20 million was worth it for the lolz.
But a little money can’t keep a great comic down. On April 14, 2022, Musk offered a $54.20-per-share offer on Twitter and signed the documents for the bid on April 20. Whether or not he meant this as a joke, because it’s admittedly not a great reason to pick a price, is beside the point since regulators forced him to pay up anyway (again, a small price for those sweet, sweet lolz). Clearly, the SEC doesn’t have a great sense of humor because this latest yuk-em-up is almost as funny as when Musk changed the Twitter logo to doge. Wow. Much funny. Many happy.
Of course, that gives us all who still use the currently crumbling micro-blogging site a heads up. Blue checks originally signified the organization or individual was verified by Twitter as legitimate. Now it means that the sad mark with a blue check paid $8 for the distinction of being ignored from every conversation they reply to. At least it’ll be a little easier to separate the wheat from the chaff unless your Elon Musk, who seemingly wants to watch his net worth plummet like Roman Roy pointing to his father on a stock ticker. “There he is. That is Elon.”
Correction: An earlier version of this article mistakenly said Musk was fined by the SCC. He was fined by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). We regret the error.