Then he apologized: “I’m not good at being funny.” Anyway, he went on, you can buy up to 24 check marks. “We’re always looking across the industry for innovation,” Matt Mullenweg, the CEO of Automattic, which owns Tumblr, told me when I asked about the Important Blue Internet Checkmarks. Tumblr is also selling blue-check-mark pins in its shockingly good merch store. Because this is Tumblr, the check marks quickly became the subject of fan art-“ the Important Blue Internet Checkmarks are gay and married actually,” etc. (The page for purchasing the check marks discloses that they “may turn into a bunch of crabs at any time.”) This was a good joke from the jump, but it got better when users realized they could buy more than two check marks. “Why, you ask? Why not?” the announcement explained. Last week, it started offering users the option to purchase, for a onetime fee of $7.99, not one but two “Important Blue Internet Checkmarks” to display next to their username. The famous microblogging website for freaks is constantly rumored to be at death’s door, but things are on the upswing there-and people are paying attention, thanks to the company’s inspired response to Twitter’s tumult. A blue check appeared next to an account masquerading as the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, which tweeted, “We are excited to announce insulin is free now.” (The verification program is now on pause until after Thanksgiving.)įor those disgusted or confused by Musk’s antics, there is an alternative: Just go back to Tumblr, where the antics are better. Bush, which tweeted, “I miss killing Iraqis” with a sad-face emoji. A blue check appeared next to an account pretending to be George W. This devolved into chaos about as quickly as you would imagine. Musk renovated the blue-check-mark system with the stated intention of making it, like, more egalitarian or something: Anybody could have a check if they paid a fee, and then they would have the glory of the check mark, even if it would no longer indicate anything other than the user having paid a fee. People sometimes talk about verification badges as being signifiers of “clout.” And they kind of confer importance by suggesting that a person or an entity or a brand with a check might be someone who someone else would attempt to impersonate. They’re sort of a status symbol, in the sense that check marks make users stand out, and the process for getting one is opaque and mysterious. Previously, these check marks were free and indicated an account was authentic-that’s the real New York Times, the real President Joe Biden, the real Slim Jim, and so on. Total non-starter, a real bummer.After haggling with the author Stephen King (don’t worry about it), Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter, decided that Twitter users would have to pay $8 a month to keep their blue verification check marks. I’ve talked a little bit about my mixed feelings about Myst, but I always liked the idea of the world building and I would have played Riven if the video stuff in it hadn’t consistently crashed my computer during the first couple minutes. But let’s make that better! I’ll get ‘em posted over the next few days.Īnd, man, one of these days I"d like to have the patience to revisit Riven. Long time, indeed! It got super quiet in the ol’ inbox again, and I’m afraid I got so “dare not look” about it that I’ve let a few things that actually DID straggle in sit for too long. I also remember stopping and running from the computer at times. I got the bad ending by mashing buttons and blundered my way around the islands all the way to the side entrance of the gold dome before getting completely stuck, giving up, and leaving it for ~5 years. I was young and hadn’t beaten Myst but I loved exploring that game and fell in love with Riven immediately. I didn’t know where to find game news at the time so I was pretty much kept up to date by Fox Trot and my sister. This is the first game I remember looking forward to. Some of the best world-building and environmental storytelling ever, fantastic atmosphere, memorable iconography, oppressive dictatorship, world-spanning puzzles, a sense of exploration that still makes me giddy and OMFG RIVEN. Criminally overlooked, absolutely brilliant. Intended to be the only Myst sequel before Ubisoft bought the rights and slowly burned them.
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