I Bought a Twitter Premium Account, Went Semi-Viral, and Got Banned in 12 Hours

A roller coaster of a day on Twitter

Image created by author using Elon Musk’s own “Grok” AI in a way that he would most certainly disapprove of

This piece was written in 2024.

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Twitter is a strange place, and if there’s another name the social media platform turned personal playground for billionaire Elon Musk now goes by, I refuse to acknowledge it. (If the tech titan had a modicum of self-awareness, he’d admit the name change was a failure and apply to have the URL swapped back to something less reminiscent of a porn website. But alas, that’s a screed for another day.)

One of the more controversial changes Musk made when coming to power at Twitter was the institution of a “verification” system and “Twitter Blue.” Effectively, it introduced a social hierarchy to our feeds. Unverified accounts are now the plebs on the platform. The accounts with those fancy check marks reign over them with swanky indifference, like a jet-setting billionaire zipping over LA’s sad, lowly, everyday traffic jam.

A few Twitter updates and changes to the pay scale later, and we’ve got an entire class system — a multi-tiered pyramid that offers users different levels of functionality. Perhaps most notably, it gives users varying degrees of prioritization and visibility. Each grade up the pay ladder enables our posts and replies to appear more prominently for other users.

It’s a full-fledged caste system. The only difference is that the level of social stratification makes even 8th-century India look like an open-minded liberal utopia.

For a writer trying to build a name for himself, the reasons to splurge on the highest tier and scramble my way up the social ladder are impossible to deny. But, over a year ago, I frugally bought the cheapest grade membership shortly after the feature was launched. I was loathe to find that forking over $10 a month to the Twitter-buying billionaire didn’t result in me becoming an overnight digital icon. Shocker.

With a blue check mark of pride or not, my audience maxed out around 20 views for each of my tweets. I quietly contented myself with the bitter reality that my dreams of Twitter stardom might never come to fruition. My trivial tidings on life would need to find the masses another way. My throwaway thoughts would need to remain just that. The world wouldn’t be privileged to whatever piddly idea popped into my head. For months, I lamented the tragedy while scarfing down Cool Ranch Doritos and fearing what awe-inspiring brain farts the world around me might be missing.

Ultimately, I allowed my Twitter Blue account to lapse outright. It was a crushing defeat. A moment of vulnerability.

But with the 2024 political season reaching a fever pitch, I saw a contentious conversation that I masochistically craved to be a part of. So I decided to throw my hat in the ring one more time, pull the trigger, and buy Musk’s most prestigious membership.

I winced to the point my eyes nearly closed shut as I clicked my way through the payment process for a second time and confirmed my credit card information. I gulped a weighty gulp, doing my share to make the megalomaniacal misanthrope a hundred thousandth of a percentage point richer.

Quickly, I noticed that the tweets on my profile weren’t going out to an audience of 3 viewers — 10 on a good day — but to jaw-dropping tens! An hour or two later, one of them had accrued over 100 views.

Heeding the advice of a more Twitter-minded friend, I began positioning my tweets onto the replies of relevant political posts. I’d hit the gold mine.

Suddenly, it seemed that the reins of Twitter fame were within my reach. All I had to do was casually leech the success of other tweeters in their reply sections. An article that was previously opened by no one was now appearing as a top result for anyone who enjoyed inane political commentary. Tens of views quickly mounted to thousands, and thousands of views into tens of thousands of impressions. I was a preeminent blatherer. A renowned pontificator. An unrivaled raconteur.

My piece was spreading like wildfire — being tweeted and retweeted by strangers at a virulent rate. By the time I’d achieved a cumulative 50,000 impressions, I thought I might just go to sleep and wake up with a direct message from the DNC begging me to write another.

But instead of waking up an unequivocal celebrity fighting off job offers, publishing deals, and Democratic “Deep State” agents, I rose from bed and opened my Twitter account to the slap-in-the-face notice that my account had been banned.

It turned out that the pathway to infinity Twitter views wasn’t as simple as copying and pasting my article in convenient places. Spurned by the realization, I sunk into my seat in defeat.

Minutes later, I pulled out my laptop, attempted to log back into my account, confirmed I wasn’t a robot, and managed to regain access to my account. But by the time I did, I returned to the sad reality that my all-access privileges had been unceremoniously revoked. I have full access to account features, but the once effective strategy of trying to siphon success from more prolific Twitter personalities was now fruitless. Leaving replies to Tweets suddenly landed me directly behind their spam filter. It was a tragic twist of fates.

“Viral-ish yesterday, marked as ‘probable spam’ today. Oh how the mighty fall,” I tweeted out to my single digit audience of viewers.

Trying to resolve the issue via customer support proved even more futile. I could find no customer service number to call, nor an outsourced worker in a third-world country to chat with. My attempts to talk to even an automated Twitter support bot went pathetically unrequited. No matter how many variations of support-adjacent offerings I found while scouring the website, the best I could hope for was to cycle crushingly back to the same FAQ page.

For weeks now, my Twitter account has continued to hover in a liminal space — somewhere tragically shy of semi-viral acclaim, yet still something more than an e-society downcast. I wear the same badge of honor as those bigger players — but deep down, I know I may never truly be like them. Perhaps one day, if I keep hope alive, my tweets will find their way out of this forsaken void. My indispensable toilet thoughts will have an outlet once more. I’ll no longer need to rabidly giggle to myself each time I come up with a new, 280-character quip.

Or… Elon can reinstate full access to my account. I hereby swear to be at least 15% more restrained in my attempts to copy & paste my way to Twitter superstardom.

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This article was originally published on Medium.

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