there were plenty of famous/noteworthy people who Twitter refused to verify, and plenty of completely non-noteworthy people who they did verify. I'm not sure why you're pretending that any famous/noteworthy person could be and was verified, because this was never, ever the case.
when Musk implemented cheap paid verification subscriptions, the first thing most of the formerly-exclusively-verified journalist-type users (that I follow, at least) did was post links to their profiles on new Twitter-clone platforms they were moving to, which, if investigated, revealed that they once again had a special "Verified" or "Verified Journalist" tag on their profiles there as well.
surely you're not implying that my analysis has zero merit and that nobody who was verified on Twitter before paid verification subscriptions were implemented was ever in it for the self-important narcissism?
when Musk implemented cheap paid verification subscriptions, the first thing most of the formerly-exclusively-verified journalist-type users (that I follow, at least) did was post links to their profiles on new Twitter-clone platforms they were moving to, which, if investigated, revealed that they once again had a special "Verified" or "Verified Journalist" tag on their profiles there as well.
surely you're not implying that my analysis has zero merit and that nobody who was verified on Twitter before paid verification subscriptions were implemented was ever in it for the self-important narcissism?