By Michael Costello
After Elon Musk bought Twitter, the site was in a frenzy due to some incoming policy changes. Elon knew that the only way to keep the site running was to devise a new monetization method, and that's when he came up with the idea of Twitter Red. A new way of verification to differentiate real people from bot accounts would come with a cost. It was a very controversial $6.90 a month but had one main issue; you can’t tell the difference between official verification and Twitter Red. So this gave many people some horrible ideas.
The ideas went from impersonating certain celebrities like Taylor Swift and Post Malone to impersonating news companies, and everything went wrong.
One brave soul decided to impersonate CNN before many people knew about Twitter Red and tweeted, “A NUKE IS HEADED TO NYC IN ONE HOUR. LEARN HOW TO SAVE YOURSELF.” The end of the tweet left a URL that was from a previous CNN article on how to survive a nuclear blast, so many people thought it was real. Other news companies were also impersonated, saying the same thing, which started a frenzy you couldn’t imagine. People in subways began shouting that it was the end of the world and told others to check their phones. The shock in people's eyes seeing from multiple news agencies made them think that it was a real threat. It terrified them to the core, and many people had various ideas on what to do with the new information.
With the information out, people were jumping the subway turnstiles to rush to get home to their families to spend time with them before their inevitable doom. In addition, others had ideas of stealing from stores like pharmacies due to their being a particular tablet that could protect you slightly from radiation. The pill is called Potassium Iodine Tablets, and when someone is about to find it, they would get tackled in the store. It was a battle of survival of the fittest to see who could swallow the tablet and when they did swallow it, people celebrated that they would live. It was like someone won the lottery with the way some were behaving. But others took a very different route with the last hour they thought they had with their lives and decided to focus on their religion.
After hearing the news, many individuals flocked to their nearest religious center, depending on their faith. They gave testimonies so personal that you would think they were on their deathbeds. It was a site that displayed how desperate people were to live and confessed every wrongdoing they had done to have even a sliver of hope they could survive what they thought was their inevitable doom.
When there were only a few minutes left, others just sat on the ground, waiting for the end. Families huddled together and looked at each other and the sky as they saw the Times Square clock hit the new hour, and nothing happened. People looked around and were confused, and people were shouting, “it was fake,” and “look,” as they pointed to many billboards around the city displaying news that a fake nuclear threat warning was issued online due to internet trolls. The footage being shown was of the people in Times Square. People started celebrating while others just sat there and contemplated what they thought were their final moments that were just caught on camera that others would see for the rest of time.
After this event, Twitter canceled the program, the company lost billions of dollars in stock, and 107 people died that day. It’s now known as the Nuke That Never Was, and Elon Musk's reputation is the worst it has ever been. From going from famed internet billionaire to someone that no one wants to associate with. A couple of months after this incident, Twitter was forced to file for bankruptcy due to the lawsuits.
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