On Friday, a viral Twitter thread announced the unexpected rollout of “Blue Check Homes” — a new service allowing Bay Area residents to apply to have a “Verified Badge crest” (read: blue check mark) installed on the facade of their homes to essentially identify themselves as an authentic public figure in real life.
In a matter of hours, the thread garnered international attention, swiftly amassing thousands of retweets and likes, and over 40 million impressions. The reactions from the public were wide-ranging. Some were, understandably, annoyed by the concept. Others caught onto the joke rather quickly.
But Danielle Baskin, the SF-based artist behind the prank, had no idea the website she crafted to back up the fake service would receive 495 applicants, all hoping for a crest of their own.
“I will say a percentage of them are not from a real person. People added, like, Kim Kardashian, and that was clearly a joke,” said Baskin, who in 2019 attempted to remove a series of controversial "anti-homeless boulders" from a city sidewalk by listing them on the Craigslist free section.
“But everyone else thought the website was real. I did what I thought was a mediocre Photoshop job … I thought, ‘This is all very clickbait-y.’ All of the copy, I thought, was so obviously satire.”
A screenshot from the landing page for "Blue Check Homes."
Courtesy of Danielle Baskin/@djbaskinThe idea stemmed from a simple question: Where did the plaster shields adorning some of San Francisco’s Victorian homes come from?
Recently, when Baskin was out on a walk through her neighborhood, she noticed several houses had them, but she was intrigued by one design in particular – a blue shield with a diagonal purple stripe slashed through it.
Was it decorative? Or did it indicate some sort of historical significance about the house and the family that once lived there? She decided to consult the internet for answers.
“I learned that in heraldry, this particular symbol is called a ‘bend sinister’ and used to mean that there was an illegitimate child born there,” said Baskin. “I don’t believe people living in San Francisco many years ago would have actually marked their homes with this, but it was more of a decorative thing; a way for wealthy people to dignify their homes.”
She shared her findings on Twitter, and was struck by a response from one of her followers, Adam Scheuring.
“This was the blue check before Twitter,” he joked.
A light bulb went off in Baskin’s mind. She thought it was dumb, and hilarious — what if modern day homes actually carried on this tradition?
The artist, who is also the co-creator of voice chat app DialUp, said she had the website for “Blue Check Homes” up within two hours of the initial idea.
At the top of the landing page, interested applicants are prompted to submit their name, social media account and email address for review. They are then informed that they will need to wait to be considered for an interview with the board of the company, and, upon approval, all they need to do is pay a $3,000 fee in order to have one of the coveted crests installed on their home.
Scrolling down the page, the qualifications to obtain one of these crests seem to grow increasingly absurd. You must be a homeowner who is also a “thought leader,” for instance, or identify yourself as an athlete or member of a professional esports league who has been featured in gaming publications like Kotaku, Polygon or IGN. Are you a famous actor desiring to own one of these crests? Well, unless you have at least five production credits on your IMDB profile, too bad.
"Blue Check Homes," a satirical website crafted by San Francisco artist Danielle Baskin, unexpectedly encouraged hundreds of residents to apply to have a "Verified Badge crest" installed on the facade of their homes.
Courtesy of Danielle Baskin/@djbaskinPersonally, I wanted to know how Baskin came up with all of these made-up credentials. But to my surprise, she pointed out these are all the same qualifications the actual Twitter app requires of its users requesting verified status. And that’s kind of the point of the prank.
“The verification thing is meaningless,” she said. “The blue check does not mean you’re wealthy or good at Twitter or are a notable figure, but people still have these assumptions about it. I wanted to make my whole process seem ridiculous to make fun of the verification process.”
She noted the first line of text on the “Blue Check Homes” website, which says that the badge will prove to people outside of your home that you’re an authentic public figure.
“What does that even mean?” she said, laughing. “Of course you are. You’re alive.”
Still, Baskin admits, not everyone was in on the joke, as was made apparent by the large number of applicants. Even the popular website Snopes conducted an official fact check on the company, labeling it as satire. But she noticed the thread started to take on a life its own, with people bashing San Francisco as a whole.
“I think the idea hit a lot of the boxes that anger people: San Francisco’s housing crisis, homeowners, blue checks, the city having dumb startups,” she said. “That triggered everyone’s assumptions about the city and it hit their version of reality that made it seem believable. I think it’s so fascinating that it was taken seriously. Three years ago, maybe it would have been a joke. But ideas are so wacky now, and news is so outlandish, that something like this just seems like another awful thing that’s happening in our world.”
Shortly after she began to investigate the origin of the crests, Baskin found herself in a conversation with her landlord, who told her that the garage she's been working out of for the past four years used to be the workshop of a plaster maker who created those crests in the 1900s and distributed them throughout the Mission, Castro and Bernal Heights neighborhoods.
Baskin said she pored over old newspaper articles and was unable to verify this claim, but because of the unique layout of the space, she believes it to be true. At any rate, it served as inspiration for the artist, who now plans to sculpt a verified badge crest for at least one of the applicants.
Of course, they’ll need to go through the interview process, and Baskin plans to rope in a few of her friends to serve as mock board members and ask questions. (She doesn’t, however, plan to charge $3,000 for the finished product.)
“I generally enjoy the whole theatrical production of an internet joke,” she said with a chuckle. “I will give it to someone who appreciates the joke and is not afraid of the mobs coming.”
As for everyone else? They might get a rejection letter, said Baskin, or she might go to the length of creating another satirical website for a competing company to direct them toward, complete with a misspelled name and an off-centered logo.
But regardless of the outcome of this bizarre social experiment — and an exercise in not believing everything you read — a disclaimer now exists at the bottom of the “Blue Check Homes” website.
“If you thought this was a full-fledged service, please investigate the things you read on the internet!” it reads. “And if you're an artist making jokes on the internet, we should consider adding disclaimers like this, because not everyone understands your commentary and will share your jokes as fact.”
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