Since the beginning of Elon Musk’s reign at Twitter, he’s threatened to remove the legacy verification—signified by a white check in a blue circle beside the account name—that predated his tenure. Musk even set April 1st as the date for the purge, which came and went without any changes, either because of ineptitude or a half-effort April Fools joke. But on April 20th—4/20, lol, ugh—he actually did it.
Nearly all of the estimated 407k legacy verified Twitter accounts lost their check marks. The only exceptions were newly unveiled Twitter Blue subscribers—and a few befuddled celebrities including Stephen King and Lebron James. Musk later said he’s paying for their subscriptions personally, something neither star seems to want.
As with all of Musk’s controversial changes to the internet’s favorite/least favorite social media site, Twitter responded with a delectable selection of memes. Scammers also seem to be taking the opportunity to impersonate prominent figures and organizations that lost their check marks.
Click through for Twitter’s best jokes memes about the blue check apocalypse.
