London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Saturday, Oct 04, 2025

Verified Twitter Users Are Stuck With Joke Names Like “Spicy Chicken Sandwich” And “Giant Penis”

Verified Twitter Users Are Stuck With Joke Names Like “Spicy Chicken Sandwich” And “Giant Penis”

Elon Musk's move to prevent account impersonation has left many users' display names frozen in time.
Alice Vaughn didn’t mean to be permanently known as “Spicy Chicken Sandwich.”

A few weeks back, Vaughn — the US-based creator of Offensive Crayons, an expletive-laden stationery collection — decided to survey her 15,000 Twitter followers: Should she change her display name to a celebrity, a company, or a “third-rate sandwich”? Their replies were conclusive: She should adopt the sandwich name.

So Vaughn switched her display name from her real name to Spicy Chicken Sandwich. It was, she told BuzzFeed News via email, “a temporary goof.” But it wasn’t so fun when it turned out that she couldn’t change it back. When she tries, she’s confronted with this message: “Error. The operation couldn't be completed. (TFSTTwitterCore.HTTPRequestAction-ResponseError error 0.).”

Blame Twitter CEO Elon Musk. In an attempt to head off the growing issue of account impersonation by people who’d paid the $8 per month for Twitter Blue, Musk decided around Nov. 7 to stop anyone with a blue checkmark from changing their display name. (On Nov. 14, he tweeted that the issue would be fixed by the end of this week, though he subsequently tweeted that the relaunch of Twitter Blue verification would be Nov. 29. So who knows?)

Musk’s decision left large numbers of verified accounts locked into sometimes ill-thought-out joke names, like problematic YouTuber @CountDankulaTV, who’s now “GIANT PENIS (Parody).” (“The joke was funny for about 5 minutes but the system won't let me move on,” tweeted @CountDankulaTV, whose real name is Mark Meechan.) Pop star Doja Cat’s display name was “christmas” until she got Musk himself to intervene. (Now she’s “fart,” after a brief period as “Elon Musk.”)

But not everyone has Doja Cat levels of clout. When Vaughn tweeted at Musk, asking him about the Twitter handle situation, “as someone who is now stuck as a chicken sandwich,” the CEO replied with the cry-laugh emoji.

And some people are unable to change non-joke names. Take Carlos Guillermo Smith, who just lost his campaign for reelection to Florida’s House of Representatives. He is currently crystalized in digital amber as “Rep. Carlos G Smith.”


For the most part, affected users are taking this in stride. Irish YouTuber and Twitch streamer Clare Cullen still has her Halloween display name, “Scare Cullen / Clisare 🎃👻.” “I don’t really care,” she said. “I think Twitter will die soon anyway, so it doesn’t matter to me.”

Then there’s Australian newsletter writer Dan Barrett, who had been changing his Twitter display name to a real-time countdown to the release of Avatar: The Way of Water months ago as part of what he described as “an ongoing, personal joke with friends, colleagues, and readers of my newsletter over the years, where I’ve been carrying on about the release of the Avatar movie being the greatest thing to take place in cinematic history.”

His name was frozen as “Dan Barrett - 38 days until Avatar: Way of Water.” (The movie comes out in Australia on Dec. 15.) “Ultimately there’s something kind of perfect that right at what might be the last days of Twitter, Twitter has come around and stuck me with this ridiculously silly username,” he said. “There’s something poetic about the whole moment.”

Hope is at hand, however: Barrett scoured Twitter and found that there was a potential loophole to change the name on verified accounts. It shares an awful lot in common with hammering your keyboard until your computer works again. After speaking with BuzzFeed News, Barrett tested the technique and found, after a couple of minutes of constant mouse clicking, that he was able to brute force his way back to being plain old “Dan Barrett.”

Cullen fears that the small change — verified accounts being mostly unable to revert back to their non-jokey names — is indicative of a broader, more concerning issue. “It’s an example of Elon Musk totally losing control of Twitter and trying mad stuff to fix the things that he’s fucked up,” she said.

Vaughn said that she too is pissed off at the direction Musk is taking Twitter. “The previous leadership of Twitter, and now Elon, have lost sight of the original value of the blue checkmark: to verify who is and isn't a real person,” she said. “People should still be able to parody and have anonymity on Twitter, but I'd love if I knew every blue check I interacted with was a real person, and not just an account like @cryptoethdoge2048 who paid $8 for their bot's checkmark.”

Dave Cobb, a theme park influencer from Los Angeles, is also no fan of Musk. In fact, his display name is now locked down as “Dave ‘Lick My Taint @elonmusk.’” Cobb would, of course, like the freedom to change it back to his legal name, but he is OK with the situation.

“I wanted to make sure my user name popped up with my clear opinion of Mr. Musk, which is that he can feel free to lick my taint,” Cobb said via Twitter DM. “It's fun to watch people pranking his missteps. And if years from now my Twitter legacy is solely about daring him to lick my taint, I'd be more than happy with that.”
Comments

Oh ya 3 year ago
Play stupid games win stupid prizes

Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
Supreme Court Extends Freeze on Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Foreign Aid at Trump’s Request
Archaeologists Recover Statues and Temples from 2,000-Year-Old Sunken City off Alexandria
China Deploys 2,000 Workers to Spain to Build Major EV Battery Factory, Raising European Dependence
Speed Takes Over: How Drive-Through Coffee Chains Are Rewriting U.S. Coffee Culture
U.S. Demands Brussels Scrutinize Digital Rules to Prevent Bias Against American Tech
Ringo Starr Champions Enduring Beatles Legacy While Debuting Las Vegas Art Show
Private Equity’s Fundraising Surge Triggers Concern of European Market Shake-Out
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
FBI Removes Agents Who Kneeled at 2020 Protest, Citing Breach of Professional Conduct
Trump Alleges ‘Triple Sabotage’ at United Nations After Escalator and Teleprompter Failures
Shock in France: 5 Years in Prison for Former President Nicolas Sarkozy
Tokyo’s Jimbōchō Named World’s Coolest Neighbourhood for 2025
European Officials Fear Trump May Shift Blame for Ukraine War onto EU
BNP Paribas Abandons Ban on 'Controversial Weapons' Financing Amid Europe’s Defence Push
Typhoon Ragasa Leaves Trail of Destruction Across East Asia Before Making Landfall in China
The Personality Rights Challenge in India’s AI Era
Big Banks Rebuild in Hong Kong as Deal Volume Surges
Italy Considers Freezing Retirement Age at 67 to Avert Scheduled Hike
Italian City to Impose Tax on Visiting Dogs Starting in 2026
Arnault Denounces Proposed Wealth Tax as Threat to French Economy
Study Finds No Safe Level of Alcohol for Dementia Risk
Denmark Investigates Drone Incursion, Does Not Rule Out Russian Involvement
Lilly CEO Warns UK Is ‘Worst Country in Europe’ for Drug Prices, Pulls Back Investment
Nigel Farage Emerges as Central Force in British Politics with Reform UK Surge
Disney Reinstates ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ after Six-Day Suspension over Charlie Kirk Comments
U.S. Prosecutors Move to Break Up Google’s Advertising Monopoly
Nvidia Pledges Up to $100 Billion Investment in OpenAI to Power Massive AI Data Center Build-Out
U.S. Signals ‘Large and Forceful’ Support for Argentina Amid Market Turmoil
Nvidia and Abu Dhabi’s TII Launch First AI-&-Robotics Lab in the Middle East
Vietnam Faces Up to $25 Billion Export Loss as U.S. Tariffs Bite
Europe Signals Stronger Support for Taiwan at Major Taipei Defence Show
Indonesia Court Upholds Military Law Amid Concerns Over Expanded Civilian Role
Larry Ellison, Michael Dell and Rupert Murdoch Join Trump-Backed Bid to Take Over TikTok
Trump and Musk Reunite Publicly for First Time Since Fallout at Kirk Memorial
Vietnam Closes 86 Million Untouched Bank Accounts Over Biometric ID Rules
×