I am not a celebrity. I am not an athlete.   I do not have a million followers.   More people don’t care about what I tweet than do care.  I do what I have always done.  I tweet content that interests me.  I argue with people. I get blocked by people. I block people. While there is a slight slant to legal issues and sports, my content is pretty much all over the board.  Nothing out of the ordinary in a day of the life of someone active on Twitter.  I was impersonated once with a bogus account but Twitter took care of that quickly. Never happened again. So how did I get that “coveted” blue check-mark that in reality wont even get you a free cup of coffee at Starbucks or  a free Footlong from Subway that is really eleven inches?

About 4 months ago,  I started getting Direct Messages(DM’s) from “Verified Accounts. It told me to click on a link.  That link took me to a page that told me that if I answered a few basic questions about Twitter and gave a phone number I would be verified.  My reaction?  YEA RIGHT!  SCAM!   I thought it was a scam to get my cell phone number  and start bombarding me with ” Big Butt Suzie” XXX porn texts.  I got these DM’s for a couple weeks. I deleted them. I went about my business tweeting, blocking and arguing.

About a month after that, I logged into the Twitter web-based application. This time there was a banner  from Twitter seamlessly integrated into my web browser again asking me if I wanted to get verified.  This looked legit.  I decided to go for it.  This time I did not have to answer any basic questions about how to use Twitter.  It simply asked for my phone number.  I entered it and the coveted blue check-mark appeared on my account. I was “verified”.   Why did they choose me?  I don’t have a freaking clue.  What does that mean?  In reality, not much at all.  My followers did not increase 10-fold.  No interview requests from major media outlets based on my new status.  My hemorrhoids did not go away.   I was the same old guy.  Tweeting, arguing, blocking, getting blocked and being a general douche at times when people annoy me.

So how do you get verified?  I will leave it to the  self-appointed  social media gurus, mavens and rock-stars to outline all the gyrations and useless social media “techniques” that will help you increase your chances of that happening.  I am here to tell you that in the end, except for some  specific impersonation issues, it doesn’t mean squat.

Have a nice day!