Tucker, Lemon, Dril, Flounder

It was a weird week y’all

April 28, 2023

What a week, huh?

On Monday, we got a double feature of cable news firings. First, we learned that racist bowtie enthusiast Tucker Carlson got the boot from FOX News. Then moments leather Don Lemon tweeted the weirdest not-notes app message about his own removal from CNN. 

We also learned that James Cordon would end his run on The Late Late Show. In addition to all of the horror stories about working with or being at a restaurant with Corden, I just find him deeply unfunny. So happy to see him go too. 

And I haven’t talked about how hot Ryan Gosling is in the Barbie promo tour yet. 

Ryan Gosling looking like a complete snack in a t-shirt that says Greta Gerwig in the Barbie font

In addition to the Barbie cast being perfect on the red carpet, canned water brand Liquid Death also dropped a branded enema kit collab with Blink-182 on Tuesday. Cause “Enema of the State” Get it? Oh, and Joe Biden is actually gonna run for reelection. 

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I Totally Forgot About Weekend at Elon’s

Sorry, I got so excited about people getting fired I skipped ahead to Monday and totally forgot to tell you about the world's most divorced necromancers' weird fight with Dril over the weekend. 

Twitter finally turned off blue checkmarks for “legacy verified” accounts not paying for Twitter Blue. Dril, who is kinda like the patron saint of Twitter for people who are actually funny, along with some other power users, started a campaign called “Block the Blue.” It’s pretty simple, now that blue checks only go to people who pay Elon $8 per month, you can just block them on sight. Combine that with the fact that taking away checkmarks did basically nothing for Twitter Blue sign-ups, and you can tell the Twitter 2.0 team was starting to panic. So they just started giving checkmarks back to previously verified accounts with over 1 million followers. 

This alone was chaos. Chrissy Teigen was in people’s mentions telling them to change their display name to remove their newly reinstated checkmark. No one wanted to be seen as paying for this thing. But celebs weren’t the only ones getting checkmarks added to their profiles. Elon’s team also tried to add one to Dril’s account. Queue the Benny Hill chase music. Twitter would verify Dril. Dril would change his display name, triggering the badge removal. They did multiple rounds of this on Saturday, and it was absolutely hilarious. 

Careful readers might have noticed that I called Elon a “necromancer” earlier, and no, it’s not me trying to make him sound cooler than he is. In addition to Dril and random famous people, Twitter also started reverifying the accounts of dead celebs. I find the whole thing deeply hilarious. Fumbling a pivot to subscription so poorly that people actively do not want to be associated with it even for free is an epically bad level of product marketing. Plus, making it look like people paid for a product they didn’t want will likely just add more lawsuits to the long queue of legal troubles facing Twiter 2.0.   

Anyway, Dril is on Bluesky now, and if anyone has an invite code, please send it my way. 

In More Undead News

Disney released promo posters for the upcoming live action Little Mermaid this week and dumped said posters directly into the uncanny valley. 

CGI has come a long way, and when VFX artists have the proper time, budget, and vision, they can do something remarkable. But let's be honest, these mostly CGI Disney/Marvel productions get rushed into looking like this ghoulish zombie fish. These eyes look through the screen begging for the sweet release of death. I didn’t need to see that.