The Week in Tweets and Memes

It was a tough week for Elon Musk, owner of Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter. And that mean it was a decent week for humor!

In the same week that SpaceX saw an unmanned rocket blow up shortly after takeoff, Tesla surprised investors on the downside, and Twitter bafflingly went ahead with plans to remove blue checks from verified accounts that didn’t pony up $8/mo for the privilege.

PodSaveAmerica’s Jon Favreau captured the confluence well.

Some users noticed that some celebrities like LeBron James and Stephen King still had their blue check marks, and they wondered what was going on. Elon explained that he was personally footing the bill for a few big accounts. Is he really that desperate to be among the cool kids?

This video captured the sense bewilderment among us avid users.

(Click the video to watch on Twitter—his war with Substack means we can’t directly embed Twitter videos any more 🙄)

Folks did have some fun with the blue checks disappearing. This poor guy has the worst name on the platform. Imagine the mentions he gets!

And just so we’re clear, there’s no risk of serious confusion over the blue checks disappearing, right?

Fox settled the big defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems, which isn’t so surprising given how often it has settled other cases after doing very bad things.

This commentator hit it on the head:

The far right got owned a few times, which is always satisfying. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) held hearings in NYC to draw attention to crimes that aren’t going addressed by authorities. (Now that I’ve just typed that, I’m openly laughing.) Others saw the deep irony as well.

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) tried to attack Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg with a meme, but he just answered with a brutal fact check.

Fox host Laura Ingraham had a guest on to talk about Bud Light (which, if you missed it, had the audacity to work with a trans influencer on a single Instagram campaign). But then this happened while he was trying to take a selfie, and you just have to watch the clip to appreciate it. (I’ve watched in 10 times and am still laughing.)

Her recovery is impressive, TBH.

In other awkward pop culture moments, Netflix’s much-hyped live airing of the “Love is Blind” reunion got delayed due to technical issues with the streaming service. This was a perfect moment for the mysteriously revived Blockbuster Twitter account to enter the chat.

Millennial audiences had thoughts on the delayed streaming. This was my favorite.

Lizzo gave a huge middle finger to Tennessee lawmakers by including a whole gaggle of drag queens in her act there. This clip captured the moment.

AI has been in the news a lot. It can be terrifying, for sure, but it can also be rather hilarious. Here’s an example. Click to see the whole series.

A few weeks ago in a different tweets and memes edition, I covered the story of Murphy the Bald Eagle, who was very patiently caring for a rock instead of an egg. Here’s a follow up. Full story here.

I just had to add commentary from one of my favorite Twitter accounts, Slate, which is itself a rock.

Rocks. Can’t take them for granite.

Twilight the Movie decided to come back like the undead, but this time as a TV Series. This nailed what many were thinking.

Both of these fine actors gave up so much in their Twilight years.

In closing, I leave you with a Dad joke, per usual.

Dad jokes. Never Adele moment.

Have a great weekend!

Jay

P.S. Thanks to all who put up with my bit of whining yesterday about needing more paid subscribers to keep at this. Many of you answered with a pledge, and it made things a little less scary at a time when money problems keep so many of us up at night! Times are hard for lots of folks, and I know that not everyone can help out. So I deeply appreciate those who can!