But there’s another possible reason Eli Lilly is making this change: Elon Musk’s introduction of Twitter’s blue verification and one guy from Queens who decided to use it to drag Eli Lilly.
In early November 2022, Twitter began offering verified trials for $8 per month to Twitter Blue subscribers. The early days were an unmitigated disaster, with copycats running rampant throughout the timeline. For example, a verified “Nintendo” account tweeted a picture of Mario giving the finger.
Sean Morrow, 34, a writer for the website A More Perfect Union, also wanted to get in on the verification prank. He changed the handle of his old news account, which he had, to @Elilillyandco, and tweeted, “We’re excited to announce that it’s now free.”
The tweet went viral, amplified by people who probably mistakenly thought it was real and those who realized it was a doofus. Morrow foolishly dunked both Eli Lilly (many felt the $300 billion corporation should already be insulin-free) and Musk on Twitter for his ill-conceived new feature.
Morrow doesn’t have diabetes, but he was driven by the injustice of insulin pricing. “I always saw it as one of the worst corporate exploitations of everyone else in a world of terrible corporate exploitations,” he told BuzzFeed News.
