We're not really discussing reality if you believe that Stephen King gets status from the blue check rather than it working the other way around. There are people that do (sadly, pathetically) extract status from blue checkmarks, but they're only able to do that because people like Stephen King play ball with this system. The "blue checkmark status" could literally be phrased as "people as high-status as Stephen King and those like him".
Obviously, substitute Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Rihanna, Selena Gomez, and LeBron in as appropriate to your particular interests.
The silly way Stephen King distances himself from the unwashed masses is the 400 million copies of his books that he's sold to them, and the various movies and TV properties built on his IP. Again: you're not talking about reality if you think people like King care about blue-check status more than Twitter cares about keeping them happy. You can wishcast that away any way you please, but that's all you're doing. Twitter needs Taylor Swift on the platform talking about Midnights. Twitter could kick Swift off the platform and do nothing at all to her popularity.
What's pretty clearly happening in these conversations is that Twitter-believers are conflating blue-check remora users who have no public profile outside of Twitter with actual celebrities. King is right, and Musk knows it: if he's smart, Musk will in fact find ways to kick things back to King, Swift, and LeBron to keep them happy. He needs them, and they don't need him at all.
No. His last major film, from 2019, had the second-highest opening weekend of any horror film in history. His work might not be relevant to you (it's not especially relevant to me), but we're back in motivated unreality when we start talking about him being culturally irrelevant, or that "nobody knows he's still alive".
Yes. It's a movie from 2019. Stephen King appears in it. I agree: his cultural impact in American is significant enough that books he wrote nearly 40 years ago are the bases for moves that set opening records today. It's pretty nuts!
Twitter needs LeBron James and Taylor Swift and the latest Kpop stars.
It has a sort of symbiotic relationship with world leaders and journalists.
But it does not really need people like James Woods and Kevin Sorbo (to pick two from the other end of the political spectrum). Same goes for 90s grunge bands or 80s hair bands. I fully expect those guys to pay to try to stay relevant. And I would put famous authors from the 70s and 80s in the same category.
In fact, if you visit his IMDB page: <https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000175/>, you'll see that right at this moment, the population of a medium sized city is employed producing content based on his writing.
Except of the social networks I browse, stephenking.com is not one of them. So really no I wouldn't hear of him. I'm sure his die hard fans will though.
You misread what I'm saying. Obviously I would hear his name but I would not be checking what he's posting about online. Which is clearly the situation for a giant writer like King.
Obviously, substitute Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Rihanna, Selena Gomez, and LeBron in as appropriate to your particular interests.