Despite Elon Musk being a Saturday Night Live alum and declaring that “comedy is legal now on Twitter” shortly after his acquisition deal closed, he is not taking kindly to verified accounts including Kathy Griffin’s that changed their profile photos and screen names to “Elon Musk” to troll the billionaire.
Before getting her account suspended, Griffin made the name change and wrote a few pro-Democratic tweets in the days before election day.
“Hey complainers and activists. Want to see real activism?” Griffin as “Musk” tweeted with the hashtag “Vote Blue.”
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Griffin also wrote another tweet about abortion rights which read, “After much spirited discussion the [sic] females in my life, I’ve decided that voting blue for their choice is only right. (They’re also sexy females, btw).”
If you looked at the Tweet for more than a few seconds, you would clearly see “@kathygriffin.”
However, this funny troll is still against Twitter’s terms of service even before Musk took over, and comics have gotten accounts banned in the past for using their verified status to switch to a celebrity or brand’s name for some goofy shenanigans.
One deranged instance of this was the comedian Patti Harrison, who has also acted in Shrill and I Think You Should Leave. She got banned from Twitter in 2021 when she changed her account to “Nilla Wafers by Nabisco” and fired off some truly strange rants in tweet form.
Here’s how long it took Musk to withstand the trolling before he went back on his “comedy is legal promise.”
After nine days of verified accounts scooping up his profile photo to try and dunk on him the hardest, he came back with a bitter clarification that accounts must be “clearly specifying ‘parody'” while roasting him.
Griffin hasn’t been cursed to a tweet-less existence, though. She has written a few tweets insulting Musk and started the hashtag “#FreeKathy” from her late mother Maggie Griffin’s account which also has a significant follower count.
