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I recall that the Blue Check system was utterly corrupt. Money exchanged hands for that little icon. It was status that needed to be guarded if you wanted to keep it. Making it a virtual panopticon where anyone not demonstration the right opinion they where severely punished with a loss of status and possibly economically at the workplace by informal ESG-auditors.
A friend of mine got a Blue Check just for being cool, AFAICT. He wasn't a celebrity or an authority, just some kind of jetsetter guy who knew everyone.
It was totally arbitrary and there where so called "journalists" that needed it for their "job". Because the blue check came with increased visibility and access to other blue checks. So your jetsetting friend was probably interesting enough to be someone to write a post about or since knowing everyone could be a way to get access to someone. When Elon bought Twitter and started messing with the blue check people like Stephen King started whinging that they lost their two tier Twitter and the plebs was going to show up on their timeline. So much for equity...
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