> the people who had bleu checks before the $7.99 fee are addicted to attention, validation, and/or lording their bleu check status over others.
This is not a thing people regularly did? Old-school blue checks were never a status symbol, just a way Twitter used to denote "real" (meaning from-the-author-stated) and "fake" (real-humans-parodying-someone-else) accounts.
The idea that they denoted status was a criticism born from misunderstanding and invented by far-right activists who mostly were never involved in Twitter socially during the first 10 years of it's run, and never really understood Twitter user's culture. 99% of people with "blue checks" were not doing some holier-than-thou dance or whatever. (It's also why none of these people are rushing to pay $8 for this newly-invented blue-as-status symbol thing -- it was never about status, these people are already often rich and famous or at least noteworthy in their field, they don't need some weirdo micro-validation from Twitter.
Only a completely tone-deaf crazy person would pay money for Twitter in an attempt to gain validation or status.