He wasn't haggling. He was mocking the blue check status symbol in King's face and audience.

$8 makes it cheaper than a Netflix subscription for something that previously exclusive and had no dollar value attached to it. It was literally unbuyable.

We're not really discussing reality if you believe that Stephen King gets status from the blue check rather than it working the other way around. There are people that do (sadly, pathetically) extract status from blue checkmarks, but they're only able to do that because people like Stephen King play ball with this system. The "blue checkmark status" could literally be phrased as "people as high-status as Stephen King and those like him".

Obviously, substitute Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Rihanna, Selena Gomez, and LeBron in as appropriate to your particular interests.

Without people like Stephen King sharing their halo, the blue checkmark will soon be the mark of tryhards

To some degree it already is, for people who have the checkmark you haven't heard of outside of Twitter.

It's a well worn meme to mock people throwing a fit over not getting a checkmark.

When some dipshit pundit throws that hissy fit, the meme is dead on.

When Twitter annoys people like Stephen King, it's exactly backwards.

The elite have always used myriad silly ways to distance themselves from the unwashed masses throughout history. Stephen King isn't different in this respect.

The silly way Stephen King distances himself from the unwashed masses is the 400 million copies of his books that he's sold to them, and the various movies and TV properties built on his IP. Again: you're not talking about reality if you think people like King care about blue-check status more than Twitter cares about keeping them happy. You can wishcast that away any way you please, but that's all you're doing. Twitter needs Taylor Swift on the platform talking about Midnights. Twitter could kick Swift off the platform and do nothing at all to her popularity.

What's pretty clearly happening in these conversations is that Twitter-believers are conflating blue-check remora users who have no public profile outside of Twitter with actual celebrities. King is right, and Musk knows it: if he's smart, Musk will in fact find ways to kick things back to King, Swift, and LeBron to keep them happy. He needs them, and they don't need him at all.

Not sure King is the best example here.

The only reason anyone knows he’s still alive is because he’s been doing sad political attention seeking stuff on Twitter. More like the people in your other category.

No. His last major film, from 2019, had the second-highest opening weekend of any horror film in history. His work might not be relevant to you (it's not especially relevant to me), but we're back in motivated unreality when we start talking about him being culturally irrelevant, or that "nobody knows he's still alive".

Are you referring to the second It movie? That was based on a book from 1986. Nearly 40 years ago.

Yes. It's a movie from 2019. Stephen King appears in it. I agree: his cultural impact in American is significant enough that books he wrote nearly 40 years ago are the bases for moves that set opening records today. It's pretty nuts!

We were talking about Twitter.

Twitter needs LeBron James and Taylor Swift and the latest Kpop stars.

It has a sort of symbiotic relationship with world leaders and journalists.

But it does not really need people like James Woods and Kevin Sorbo (to pick two from the other end of the political spectrum). Same goes for 90s grunge bands or 80s hair bands. I fully expect those guys to pay to try to stay relevant. And I would put famous authors from the 70s and 80s in the same category.

Laughing out loud at the attempt to compare Kevin Sorbo and James Woods to Stephen King. Kevin Sorbo really does need Twitter!

He's quite active. https://stephenking.com/works/all/ then sort newest to oldest.

Except of the social networks I browse, stephenking.com is not one of them. So really no I wouldn't hear of him. I'm sure his die hard fans will though.

>So really no I wouldn't hear of him

I guess if you never step foot into a library, bookstore, movie theatre, etc. Sure.

King does not sell books because of his presence on a social network. He sold 350 million copies of his books before Twitter was even invented.

"die hard fans" the only ones to hear of King? Big lol.

He wrote his best works before most of his readers were online at all.

He’s highly culturally relevant, but not because of anything he’s done lately.

This is just special pleading. You need to do better than "I don't care about his recent work".

You misread what I'm saying. Obviously I would hear his name but I would not be checking what he's posting about online. Which is clearly the situation for a giant writer like King.

Is Elon going to also ban links to stephenking.com if he doesn't pay $8?

I was assuming you might have Prime, Netflix, Hulu, Apple TV, or go to the bookstore or library or movies.

None of those things include what stephen kings is thinking about today.

In fact, if you visit his IMDB page: <https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000175/>, you'll see that right at this moment, the population of a medium sized city is employed producing content based on his writing.

“We need to pay the bills somehow! Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers. How about $8?”

If you can see mocking in those 3 sentences then I can metaphorically see you popping up and down on elons lap.

> [...] had no dollar value attached to it. It was literally unbuyable.

$44 billion seem to be the going rate.