William Shatner Freaks Out About "Nobodies" Being Verified on Twitter
That little blue "verified" checkmark on Twitter means something. It's for stars, people the common folk aspire to emulate. People whose valuable Personal Brands™ are at stake. People like William Shatner. And definitely not those pissant "nobodies" in the media.
Engadget, the AOL-owned blog about comparing various off-brand iPads, recently notched its 1 millionth Twitter follower. As the social media manager who helped the site hit that milestone, John Colucci naturally wanted to celebrate the achievement on Twitter.
OMGOMGOMGOMGOMG #Engadget1M pic.twitter.com/YM8IpSfpi2
— John Colucci (@johncolucci) June 21, 2014
But William Shatner was unimpressed. Not only that, he was outraged that Colucci, a "nobody," has the magical blue checkmark while some of Shatner's celebrity pals are still waiting for theirs.
Shatner went off on a multi-tweet rant accusing Engadget of gaming the system to get their "unimportant" employees verified on Twitter.
@johncolucci Why are you even @verified? If this guy can get verified I'll nominate my Social Media guy.
— William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) June 21, 2014
@DashaPohoral @Numeson @verified @twitter and nobodies should not be verified because it shows a huge flaw in the Twitter system.
— William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) June 22, 2014
I want to know how Engadget has all these seemingly unimportant jobs with all @verified accounts. @Support it's a mockery. Want names? Contd
— William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) June 22, 2014
Why is @GineokwKoenig, @RobertPicardo and so many other PUBLIC figures not @verified but a college student & editorial asst are? It's wrong
— William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) June 22, 2014
Maybe I need to request to be unverified? Who wants to be part of a broken system that folks can pay $ or reward cronies while others wait?
— William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) June 22, 2014
Despite a lot of backlash—Captain Kirk is still sparring with critics on Twitter two days after he started the argument—the actor has refused to allow that there might be a purpose to verification other than separating the truly famous from the rabble and protecting their identities from impostors.
After all, who would ever pretend to work for a media organization? How distasteful!