SAN FRANCISCO – Twitter confirmed today that it is looking to boost falling revenues by asking users to pay money in order to be harassed by strangers online.
“We are exploring ways to give Twitter users all the current joys of random assholes coming into their mentions to call them the c-word but with the added benefit of knowing that everyone involved in that interaction is paying to be a part of it,” said CEO and founder Jack Dorsey.
“Our goal at Twitter has always been to elevate the discourse. Think of how much more meaningful an interaction will be when you pay to make a cute little joke about Han Solo not being good at smuggling and someone else pays to reply to that joke with a threat to come to your house and rape you.”
While many users are wary of having to pay for a service that was formerly free, Twitter’s announcement that they will be charging extra to people who reply to a tweet with the same joke that several other people have already replied with has been met with praise, as has their promise that under the new subscription model celebrities will no longer be allowed to ruin fun viral memes by participating in them.
Users’ opinions on the subscription model are split, with one user tweeting “Paying to harass people defeats the point, when I harass people I need them to know they are worthless” while another tweeted “This is great, my racism will come across as much more forceful when those I abuse know I’m willing to pay to call them such horrific slurs.”
Twitter has also announced that they are looking into creating a deluxe ‘reply guy’ package, which, when purchased, will stop other accounts from muting or blocking the reply guy’s attempts to reword jokes, give unasked for advice, and call women ‘stuck up sluts’ for not responding to their compliments.
At press time, several of Twitter’s right-wing microblogging competitors who were hoping that that Twitter users would defect in droves at the prospect of Twitter becoming a subscription service were disappointed to learn that even in a world in which Twitter costs money, they still literally can’t give their own services away.
