But there’s another possible reason why Eli Lilly is making this change: Elon Musk’s bungling with the launch of Twitter Blue verification, and some guy from Queens who decided to exploit it to troll Eli Lilly.
In early November 2022, Twitter began offering verified checkmarks to Twitter Blue subscribers who paid $8 per month. The early days were an undeniable disaster, with copycats trampling the entire timeline. For example, a verified “Nintendo” account tweeted a photo of Mario pointing his finger.
Sean Morrow, 34, a writer for the site More Perfect Union, also wanted in on the verification prank. He changed the handle of a former news account he had to @EliLillyandCo and tweeted: “We are excited to announce that insulin is now free.”
The tweet went viral, amplified by people who may have mistakenly believed it was real and those who understood it was nonsense. Morrow skillfully executed a dunk against both Eli Lilly (many believed that a $300 billion corporation should already be making insulin-free products) and Musk’s Twitter for its poorly thought-out new feature.
Morrow does not have diabetes, but was forced to do so by the unfairness of insulin pricing. “I always saw it as one of the worst corporate exploitations of everyone else in a world of terrible corporate exploitations of everyone else,” he told BuzzFeed News.
