Author Stephen King was confused on Thursday to see that his popular Twitter account still had an unexpected — and apparently unwelcome — perk: a blue checkmark, the symbol that identifies users who are “verified” by the company.
The deadline that the company had set for people to either keep their checkmark by paying for a subscription to Twitter Blue, or risk losing it, had come and gone. Thousands of notable people whose accounts had previously been verified by the social media company lost their checkmarks all at once.
But not King, even though the novelist and Maine resident had previously balked at the idea of paying to keep it.
“My Twitter account says I’ve been subscribed to Twitter Blue. I haven’t,” King wrote in a post on Twitter Thursday afternoon. He said he had also not given Twitter his phone number, despite a note linked to his blue check saying that he had.
Like many of the “King of Horror’s” bestselling books, it remained a mystery. But not for long.
Elon Musk, who bought Twitter for $44 billion in October and spearheaded the new checkmark policy, said on Thursday that he was “personally” paying the subscription costs for several high-profile accounts, including King’s, whether they’d asked for them or not.
The move was seen by some as a way for Musk to troll detractors of his blue check subscription model.
In October, King sparred with Musk after Twitter’s new owner first hinted he planned to charge $19.99 per month for the checkmarks.
“$20 a month to keep my blue check? [Expletive] that, they should pay me,” King tweeted at the time. “If that gets instituted, I’m gone like Enron.”
Musk responded to King by lowering the offer: “How about $8?”
King wouldn’t budge. As he wrote in a reply to another user at the time, “It ain’t the money, it’s the principle of the thing.”
Musk said Thursday that he also gave complementary subscriptions to some other select high-profile users, including basketball star LeBron James and actor William Shatner.
Like King, James had openly vowed not to pay for the app.
“Welp guess my blue (checkmark) will be gone soon cause if you know me I ain’t paying,” he wrote in March.
Shatner, who also resisted signing up for Twitter Blue, responded more cordially this week.
“Thank you, I accept,” the actor wrote in a tweet posted without context on Wednesday, the day before the checkmark purge, alongside a “thumbs up” emoji.
Others whose accounts sported blue checks after Thursday’s purge also suggested they had not asked — much less paid — for their checkmarks.
Rapper and actor Ice T, who had earlier said he wouldn’t pay (”[expletive] that,” he wrote in March), still had his as of Friday afternoon.
On Thursday, after it became clear that his checkmark had been inexplicably preserved, Ice T wrote a reply to King’s tweet, saying “Thanks Stephen. Don’t believe the hype.”
“Maybe it’ll disappear soon,” he added in a post five minutes later, in an apparent reference to the checkmark.
Blue checkmarks have not always been handed out so freely. Until recently, only those who had established themselves as notable — celebrities, public officials, journalists, and others who might benefit from being able to prove their authenticity online — could get one.
Now, the checks are available to anyone willing to pay for Twitter Blue, a service that costs $8 a month for web users or $11 a month for users on mobile, and comes with other features such as being able to post longer videos and having tweets displayed more prominently in other users’ feeds.
An estimated 385,000 accounts had signed up for Twitter Blue by late March. Many big names on the app, including Pope Francis, media mogul Oprah Winfrey, and even Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey, have not, and are no longer verified.
Why Musk would dole out complimentary subscriptions to critics is open to interpretation. Some have speculated he merely wanted to antagonize them, or that he’s trying to raise the profile of the checkmarks by ensuring some of Twitter’s most popular users maintain them. King has 7.1 million Twitter followers and has posted to the app frequently for nearly a decade.
After King insisted he had not paid to remain verified, Musk taunted him with a reply.
“You’re welcome namaste,” he wrote, adding in a “prayer hands” emoji.
Spencer Buell can be reached at spencer.buell@globe.com. Follow him @SpencerBuell.