Now this has become a thing — the blue tick next to your name on Twitter. Why
Why him? Why not me? And in recent days, that has escalated to the levels of conspiracy — the blue tick has now been elevated to the equivalent of a secret handshake that marks out the members of an elite left-leaning club. So now we have intense agonising about the blue tick, we talk of how withholding it is a conspiracy against right-thinking (oh no, I didn’t mean to pun) elements. We’ve even begun to dig for “evidence”, now.
Saw this on my timeline:
Quite frankly @twitter, @TwitterIndia, @jack, and @Raheelk not only are a disappointment, they are an embarrassment. pic.twitter.com/ItRfXGqmdg
— Anand Ranganathan (@ARangarajan1972) March 9, 2016
The noise around this whole “blue tick” thing, the “woe is me they are not giving me this little toy” thing has begun to make me wonder. And from that arises a thought, and a serious question for you guys:
From all that I can see of Twitter’s ‘verified account’ policy, I qualify. At least, I don’t know that I am “highly sought” by users, but I am a journalist, for what it is worth. Plus — and this is particularly relevant in a country like ours where who you know often trumps who you are — I know the top honchos at Twitter India; one of them, Raheel Khurshid, is a friend from back when he was a journalist. Strikes me that Twitter has never offered me that tick, nor has it occurred to me to ask for this “validation”, nor has it been offered.
Hence my question: Do you guys think I am any less credible for not having the tick? Are you less likely to take people like me seriously because some social media site — which came into existence decades after I did — hasn’t certified that I am who I say I am? Will you take my pronouncements as gospel if I pull strings and call in favors and get “ticked”?
Seriously, WTF is with the blue tick anyway?
