But there's another possible reason why Eli Lilly is making this change: Elon Muskthe clumsy implementation of Twitter Blue verification and one guy from Queens who decided to use it to troll Eli Lilly.
In early November 2022, Twitter began offering verified checkmarks to paid Twitter Blue subscribers at $8 per month. The first few days were an undeniable disaster, with the impersonators running roughshod throughout the entire timeline. For example, a verified Nintendo account tweeted a photo of Mario giving the finger.
Sean Morrow, 34, the author of the website More Perfect Union, also wanted to take part in the verification draw. He changed the name of his old new account to @EliLillyandCo and tweeted: “We're happy to announce that insulin is now free.”
The tweet went viral, amplified by people who may have mistakenly believed it was real and those who knew it was stupid. Morrow cleverly took a jab at both Eli Lilly (many believed the $300 billion corporation should have made insulin free by now) and Musk's Twitter for its poorly conceived new feature.
Morrow doesn't have diabetes, but the unfair price of insulin forced him to. “I've always considered this to be one of the worst corporate exploitations of everyone else in a world of terrible corporate exploitations of everyone else,” he told BuzzFeed News.
