It Now Costs $100 a Month to Speak
Hello,
We regret to inform you that it now costs one hundred dollars a month to speak. To be clear: it is still free to make sounds with your mouth, but no one will be able to understand you until you sign up online with your credit card and initiate a payment of at least one hundred dollars a month.
We have decided to implement this pay-to-speak policy for your own good. Here’s the way it used to be: everyone could speak for free, but some people who were really good at speaking would have lots of people listening to them. And others, who didn’t have anything very good or interesting to say, didn’t have people listening to them—or the people who were listening to them just kind of… sucked?
Anyway, now we have democratized speech! By charging you for it. You’re welcome!
Some people have expressed disappointment; they believe that by charging for speech, we’re actually impeding on freedom of speech. But that’s just not true! Because everyone has the freedom to pay for speech.
Some people have expressed sticker-shock; they believe one hundred dollars a month is untenable for the average wannabe-speaker. But we believe we’re creating something called incentive. If you really want to speak, then you’ll find a way to pay.
Finally, some people have expressed pessimism; they believe that charging for speech will lead to meaningless background noise of all the wealthiest companies buying up as much speech as they can afford, and that the voice of the individual and of the people will fade into hate-speech obscurity, and only Capital will remain. This is correct! Capital is the name of the game for us. We hope, one day, the world will be one single company, and that company will be mine. I mean—er, ours.
Thank you for subscribing, and we hope to “hear” you soon!
We accept all forms of payment. Bye!
Q&A about this piece
Q: Is this about Elon and Twitter?
A: Yes.
Q: Makes sense.
Speaking of speech…
A piece of mine about this very topic is making the rounds online. I wonder why!
That’s all for this week—thanks for reading! Goodbye.
Does the $100 free speech fee include a blue check mark, or is that extra?