Charlie Carrel, the CEO of Thrive UK and a professional poker player was heavily criticized on Twitter for accusing musician Steve Albini of buying his likes and followers on the platform.

Carrel, who still has a blue checkmark next to his name on Twitter, even after the Twitter Blue purge that took place on April 20, ending in hundreds of thousands of social media users losing their verification, could not believe that Albini, who is known for defending transgender rights, had more likes and followers than him. Incidentally, Albini was one of the Twitter users who firmly stood against paying $8 for Twitter Blue and ended up losing his blue check on the platform.

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On April 24, Carrel tweeted: “When I speak against the trans-mania, I wish we could have a powerful, honest, and good faithed discussion about it. The people that agree with my stances of the trans phenomenon are often adding the underlying principle of ‘trans people are all disgusting’ or ‘trans people are all sexual predators’. Even if you believe 100% of trans people are delusional in their idea of what transness is (which is wrong), they are still a human that needs compassion and understanding. This is the big problem with the ‘anti-woke’ crowd. There’s so much hatred embedded into the arguments. If you truly care about stopping insanity spreading, you’ll find multitudes more success, if you speak from a position of compassion, empathy, and love.”

To this, Albini responded by saying, “You call it ‘trans mania.’ You are not prepared to have a good faith discussion.”

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Carrel responded by writing, “This guy is paying for likes and follows, right? Engagement analytics on this are nonsensical.” Albini called out the tweet by responding, “This is, legitimately, the funniest thing anybody has ever said about me.” At this, Carrel said, “Your like:view ratio is out of this world – multitudes higher than the most successful people on the platform. And it was subtweet. Either you’re lying, or your brainless, woke nonsense organically outperforms every other creator for some reason.”

Since then people have reacted to Carrel’s comments, calling his attitude which might have been impacted by the fact that he had the Twitter Blue checkmark:

Who is Charlie Carrel?

He is the CEO of Thrive UK, a charitable app that aims to end homelessness in the United Kingdom. “People experiencing homelessness receive 100% of the donations made – without needing the app themselves. These donations can only be redeemed for food, shelter and essential amenities,” the website for the app says.

Carrel was born on November 7, 1993. He is also a professional poker player on the online platform PokerStars under the nickname “Epiphany77”. Prior to poker, Carrel made a living as a drug dealer.

By April 2017, he turned a $15 deposit into over $3,700,000. He had won over $1 million playing poker in May 2015. He won the PokerStars European Tour in Monte Carlo defeating 215 other players in the high roller tournament. He also finished 5th in the Malta tournament as well as a poker tournament in London in November of 2014.

As of August 2020, Carrel has a career live tournament winnings of over $9,500,000.