Unverifying myself

Status and soul-searching on the internet

I’ll let you into an embarrassing little secret: I paid for my blue tick on Instagram. And for £11.99 a month, you too can be ‘somebody’. 

I have been shelling out this monthly fee to Mark Zuckerberg since last December when I decided to launch my freelance career. I’d had a baby, moved on from my job, and wanted to try going it alone for the first time. My plan was to write for publications, launch a Substack, and do some consulting work because, let’s face it, those first two probably weren’t going to pay all the bills. 

As I’m sure many women would agree, returning to work after becoming a mother is complicated. I felt irrelevant, unconfident and so, so tired. Things I’d never grappled with before. What could make me feel like I still mattered more than a blue tick next to my name? I am back and I am somebody. 

But I did used to be somebody. I was Editor-in-Chief at Refinery29 UK, a hugely popular women’s site. I had bylines in dozens of high-profile publications under my belt. But without a job title to write in my bio, I felt faceless and off course. I’d not written anything in years and hidden behind a brand, preferring the writers and editors who I worked with to be platformed and promoted. All in all, I was pretty anonymous. A verification would boost my ego and work prospects. Or it would make me feel like someone when I hardly knew who I was anymore. 

Some of us tried to get verified when we were at R29. At the time, Instagram was handing out blue ticks to journalists at the same rate that media companies were handing out P45s. We thought it would help us be taken seriously when we reached out to brands and potential interviewees. But our applications were rejected, which we thought strange because journalists at much smaller publications all had them. I guess whoever was making the call at Meta didn’t read Money Diaries.

Meta turned on paid-for verifications in March 2023 for the US, and the following May for the UK, a quick cash-grab not dissimilar to Elon Musk’s strategy on Twitter (I refuse to call it X), although rolled out with slightly less chaos. An astute headline noted: “If everyone is verified, no one is verified”. It’s a bit like Soho House - when they let anyone in, is there any point? But somehow a blue tick still seemed to matter. It might seem pathetic to pay for a status symbol but then most designer fashion wouldn’t exist if more people had that mindset. 

And indeed I have received numerous work enquiries through Instagram, via DM as well as through email, because I have my address in my Insta bio. But has a blue check been the reason for these connections? Well, no, of course it hasn’t. These things are ultimately meaningless.

And that’s why I recently unverified myself, cancelling my “Meta Verified Creator” account. I don’t want to pay a billionaire to make me feel important. And besides am I really going to part with £11.99 a month and its inevitable inflated future price for, what, the rest of my life? (Or until Instagram collapses, whichever comes first).

This is not intended to rib anyone who pays for social media verifications. People have numerous reasons and it might likely make good business sense for some (although I do think it’s worthwhile asking yourself what you’re actually paying for). I utilised it at a time when I was feeling low and unsure of myself. But now I have something better than a tick, I have my name and the body of work I am slowly building up. They might not be well known but for the first time since starting out in December I feel things are moving in the right direction. I have almost 7000 subscribers on Substack, I regularly receive commissions and take meetings, and - the best part - I get some incredible feedback from readers. 

And for a few months now I’ve had a badge of a different kind - that of a Substack bestseller (for those that might not be familiar, Substack gives writers different coloured badges for when they have hundreds, thousands or tens of thousands of paid subscribers). It’s one I have earned, not paid for. And it feels good. Incidentally, Substack does give you the option to hide your badge when you are awarded one, but, hey, I’m displaying mine. 

In a way this ties into the wild discourse we’ve seen on Substack this week about who is - and who isn’t - a writer, and who should be remunerated. (The viral post by Emily Sundberg that started this discussion, and which I thought was really interesting, can be read here). I have a 15 year career behind me but since December have felt like I am starting afresh. A social media tick doesn’t really mean anything but your body of work does. What does your name mean? What do you want it to mean? If you are new to writing, then keep going. Establish yourself.

For now my blue tick on Instagram remains until my contract expires. But its days are numbered. However ridiculous it sounds, I guess I’m grateful to it; it was something to prop me up when I felt adrift, when I couldn’t quite figure out my identity - becoming a mother, no longer an editor, feeling like a nobody. In an absurd way it’s the best money I’ve ever spent. I’m just glad I don’t feel like I need it to prove myself anymore. 

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Some readers may recall that I wrote about watering tomato plants with my father, three weeks before he died in June. Well my mother came to stay with me last weekend and would you look at what she brought with her: the first crop from dad’s beloved plants, which he tended to right until the end. Unbelievably they made it. And they were magnificent.

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Finally, it was reported this week that Australians outlive all wealthy English-speaking countries including the UK, the USA, Canada, Ireland and New Zealand. Australians’ life expectancy (81 for men, 85 for women) is two years longer than their UK counterparts and five years longer than Americans. I have an Australian mother (and a passport) and have spent some time living there so I wrote a story for the i newspaper about why Aussies might live longer, which you can read here. 

See you next week!