William Shatner was ridiculed for ranting about "nobodies" getting verified Twitter accounts, a perk usually reserved for celebrities, but couldn't he also have a point?
Shatner's tweets involved asking why the "social media guy" for Engadget, John Colucci, needed to have a verified Twitter account, according to BuzzFeed. From @williamshatner:
@johncolucci Why are you even @verified? If this guy can get verified I'll nominate my Social Media guy.
@DashaPohoral @Numeson @verified @twitter and nobodies should not be verified because it shows a huge flaw in the Twitter system.
Then Michael Gorman, editor-in-chief of Engadget, who also is a verified user, begins to defend Colucci and then comes the Shatner flaming, including this from evleaks, "All relative. To some of us, whose only familiarity with yr work involves a space movie starring a whale, YOU are the nobody."
It all ends with Shatner wanting to be unverified. "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?"
Whilst some called it "the best thing that ever happened on Twitter," it was the usual Internet overreaction. Why does a tech mag's social media coordinator or editor need a verified Twitter account? Who is spoofing Engadget's staff? Others, especially journalists at the Re/Code, have verified accounts, too. But are they really celebrities?
Shatner merely pointed out the rather strange way that Twitter decides who has and who doesn't have verified accounts, and we can't see he was wrong to point it out.
