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Neil Gaiman, Stephen King Won't Pay Elon Musk For Their Own Words

Neil Gaiman on not paying Elon Musk for the "privilege" of having Twitter get free content from him; Stephen King clarifies Twitter status.

As you've probably heard, Elon Musk had a little problem getting it up earlier today – and that might've been the reason that Musk pulled the trigger on getting rid of a crapload of blue checkmarks. Of course, Musk's "it" was SpaceX's Starship, which launched from Texas this morning – before exploding midair ahead of stage separation. And seconds after we saw the news come across Twitter (ironic, right?), we knew someone was going to pay – in this case, a lot of "someones." Two people, in particular, who have no interest in handing over even a dime to Musk are famed bestselling authors & pop culture icons, Stephen King and Neil Gaiman. The two writers had two different paths today when it came to Musk's move to make himself feel better, but it would end up leading to a brief social media bonding moment between the two.

If you're a Bleeding Cool TV reader, then you know that King and Musk have had a beef going back and forth for some time – with King just crushing Musk each time. Now, King's Twitter account is showing that he paid for a checkmark and gave a phone number – two things that King made a point of denying earlier today – and then driving the point home"

Interestingly enough, there were reports going around this afternoon that Musk might be leaving blue checkmarks with some famous folks who've spoken out against him as a way of trying to "divide & conquer" their support on Twitter. Do we know this for sure? Nope – it's just rumor & innuendo until we get some proof. That said? If it's possible to believe King 148.82%, then that's how much we believe King. As for Gaiman, he laid out the best argument as to why it's righteously egotistical for Musk to go from having a platform that benefitted from having folks like King & Gaiman offer content on it for free, to being expected to pay for the "privilege" of giving Musk their words:

But if there was a silver lining in all of this Musk-created unnecessary drama, it's that we got to see two of our favorite writers bond over not being beholden to Musk and his little blue checkmarks:

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