@dril is apseudonymous Twitter user best known for his idiosyncratic style ofabsurdist humor andnon-sequiturs. The account and the character associated with the tweets are all commonly referred to asdril (the account'susername on Twitter) orwint (the account's intermittent display name), both rendered lowercase but often capitalized by others. Since his first tweet in 2008, dril has become a popular and influential Twitter user with more than 1.8 million followers.[1]
Dril is one of the most notable accounts associated with "Weird Twitter", a subculture on the site that shares a surreal, ironic sense of humor. The character associated with dril is highly distinctive, often described as a bizarre reflection of a typical male American Internet user. Other social media users have repurposed dril's tweets for humorous or satiric effect in a variety of political and cultural contexts. Many of dril's tweets, phrases, and tropes have become familiar parts ofInternet slang.
The few available details about his life fueled speculation about his identity, though a large contingent of his fanbase insisted that others respect his choice to maintain his privacy. In 2017, following adoxing incident, a piece fromNew York suggested the author's identity.[2] Dril was identified asPaul Dochney (born 1987). Dochney typically responded to press inquiries "in-character". Dochney confirmed his identity on several occasions thereafter, and in 2023 he participated in his first interview under his own name atThe Ringer.[3]
Beyond tweeting, Dochney funds his work throughPatreon, has createdanimated short films and contributed illustrations and writing to other artists' collaborative projects. His first book,Dril Official "Mr. Ten Years" Anniversary Collection (2018), is a compilation of the account's "greatest hits" alongside new illustrations. In 2019 he announced the launch of a streaming web series calledTruthpoint: Darkweb Rising, anInfoWars parody co-created with comedian Derek Estevez-Olsen forAdult Swim. Writers have praised dril for his originality and humor; for example, poetPatricia Lockwood said of him: "he is a master of tone, he is a master of character".[4]
Dochney was born in June 1987.[5] He grew up inNew Jersey, raised byworking-class parents: his father worked as a manager atFedEx while his mother, a homemaker, sought out odd jobs for additional income.[3] After dropping out of college on his first attempt, he restarted atWilmington University in Delaware and attained aBA in media design (i.e.,graphic andweb design).[3] He moved toPhiladelphia in the late 2010s.[6] By the early 2020s, Dochney resided inGreater Los Angeles.[3][7]
Dochney was an avid Internet userfrom early childhood.[3] By the 2000s, he was posting at theSomething Awfulforums under the name "gigantic drill".[8][9] He spent most of his time posting artwork to the site's "Fuck You and Die" (FYAD) forum.[3] According to David Thorpe, a former Something Awful admin, gigantic drill was known as "just a guy who was posting funny stuff on there", but never one of the site's featured front page writers.[10] Dril joined Twitter about two years after its launch, adopting the handle "@dril" because the correctly spelled "@drill" had already been taken.[3] Dril sent his first tweet, the single word "no", on September 15, 2008.[11]
Later, when reflecting on the state of Twitter at the time of his first tweet, dril said "everyone was just posting bullshit like, 'Oh, this is what I had for lunch.' It was just, like, tech guys posting inane details about their lives. I posted 'no' because I didn't care for it at the time. I still really don't care for it."[3] The @dril account then remained silent on Twitter for nine months before his second tweet—"how do i get cowboy paint off a dog."[dril 2]—and has posted regularly in the years since.[9][11]
I mean, my name is already out there. It's in myWikipedia article. Maybe people need to grow up. Just accept that I'm not likeSanta Claus. I'm not a magic elf who posts.
Dochney initially maintained anonymity; for many years, little was known about the author behind the @dril account. When asked about the account's longtime anonymity during a private Q&A in 2017, he responded "i am an almost 30 year old man and i could not really care less about the Authenticity of the platform i use to conveydick jokes."[11] Jacob Bakkila, one of the writers behind the @Horse_ebooks Twitter account, hinted in 2013 that the person behind dril had once hired him for a project.[12] Bakkila toldBuzzFeed that dril's author was agraphic designer living somewhere in theNew York metropolitan tri-state area.[12]BuzzFeed's John Herrman and Katie Notopoulos speculated that the account might be a collaborative project or that Bakkila himself was behind it.[12] Bakkila denied the rumor that he was dril, adding that dril was "a friend" who had contributed to the @Horse_ebooks sequel,Bear Stearns Bravo.[13]
On November 16, 2017, aTumblr post identifying dril's author as Paul Dochney wentviral.[14] Other posts identifying Dochney existed as early as 2014 on Tumblr, Twitter, andReddit, but these earlier posts had not gone viral or been publicized in the media.[note 1][2][15] The 2017 post unmasked dril through "informed guesswork" founded on other clues, including aLinkedIn page associated withBear Stearns Bravo and a writing credit onHiveswap, anadventure game set in the universe ofAndrew Hussie's long-runningwebcomicHomestuck.[2]
The Tumblr post was described by the press as a "doxing": an unwelcome broadcasting of private personal information online.[15][16] The post was met with backlash and dismay among Twitter users, many of whom voiced a preference for keeping dril's personal identity a mystery and preserving the author's privacy.[2][14][15][16] According to Jozefien Wouters, writing for the Belgian news magazineKnack:
The strange thing is that the unmasking caused only a relatively small shockwave. Everyone decided to pretend that nothing had happened. "I will not let you guys ruin the last good thing on this website. Protect dril, respect dril, leave dril alone", a fan tweeted. Nobody really wants to know who is making compulsive nonsense from his keyboard on the other side of the computer screen.[17]
Dril addressed the doxing on his Patreon page, writing "everything's normal. i guess im [sic] 'doxxed' now. sorry. it's fine. i donr [sic] really give a shit."[dril 4] In a Reddit "ask us anything" interview, dril confirmed that he had worked onHiveswap.[dril 5][dril 6] He said the personal impact of the doxing had been minimal, adding that people had been "surprisingly normal" and he had no "sordid past" to hide,[dril 7] but also described being outed as "my Cross to bear"[dril 8] and said "theres nothing scandalous enough there to make it worth publicizing and looking like an ass hole while doing so."[dril 3]
In August 2018, the Twitter account announced that dril was transferring thepublishing rights of his tweets to Paul Dochney, whom he called his "Agent And Master", for the purpose of publishinghis first book.[dril 9] Some reporters subsequently identified dril as Dochney.[18][19] In a 2020Reddit AMA, dril commented, "i doxxed myself so amazon would give me permission to publish my other book last year. im some guy named paul dochney who cares big whoop."[dril 10] Dochney gave his first fully "out-of-character" interview under his own name in April 2023, when he was profiled atThe Ringer.[3] The latter interview solidified his intent to be publicly identified under his personal name.[20][21]
Dochney writes dril tweetsin character, using anavatar of a blurry image ofJack Nicholson smiling and wearing sunglasses. Although there is no consistent narrative,[22][23] the"voice" or "character" is considered highly distinctive. Writer Alexander McDonough called dril a "grinning Jack Nicholson with severe persecution and self-esteem issues, poor physical health, and a bizarre love/hate relationship with cops."[11] Bijan Stephen atThe Verge likened dril to an online version of the "wise fool"stock character.[19]
Critics have described dril's voice as an amalgamation of ordinary Internet users, most of all those who are arrogant, obsessive, ignorant, or hapless. Professor of English literature Roger Bellin describes the character of dril as "generally a recognizable type: a self-important buffoon who's often raging out (show yourself, coward), or other times preening (buddy, they won't even let me), over some bit of nonsense that we're all meant to realize is absurdly unimportant."[22]Vice reviewer Rachel Pick describes dril as "a bumbling, maladapted fool ... a pudgy, oily man, frequently in a state of undress, who doesn't go through life as much as he is spilled across it."[18] According toThe A.V. Club's Clayton Purdom, dril is a sort ofpatron saint of Internet users, or "your uncle'ssearch history come to life and filtered through a scabrous comic sensibility, and ... possibly the most popular, beloved man on the entire internet (after, maybe,The Rock)."[9] Christine Erickson atMashable said dril's character was like "aspambot equivalent to the kind of crazy thatClint Eastwood portrays".[24] AtKotaku, Gita Jackson called dril a "joke account that also inadvertently catalogues ... every way to be mad online".[25]
He is a master oftone, he is a master of character; his accidents are not accidents and his spelling mistakes are not mistakes. His character is the anonymous psycho of thecomments box. He has been banned from every forum. He is all-present and nothing-knowing. He is thecorn syrup addiction of America and he is an expiredApplebee's coupon. We worship him in a big, nude church while the police blastKenny Loggins and wait for us to come out. We will never come out. We like Kenny Loggins.[4]
Dril's tweets are, in the words of Jordan Sargent atGawker, a series of "quietly seething and unhingedavant-garde scribblings".[26] His tweets are deliberately peppered with oddtypos like misspelled words, grammatical mistakes, punctuation errors, andeggcorns.[27] Yohann Koshy inVice said dril's writing "reads likeobscenenonsense verse—the syntax mutilated, the humour irredeemable".[28] In the preface to his first book, dril called his writing style "Prestige Short Prose".[18] Pick suggested that the phrase was likely "meant to make fun of the snobbylit theory types who want to make Dril out to be somehighbrow art project", but she concluded it was an apt term to describe dril's style of "part art form, partjokes to read on the toilet".[18] Pick also compared dril's writing to the surrealone-liner jokes ofJack Handey and theflash fiction short story "For sale: baby shoes, never worn".[18] Jonah Engel Bromwich, inThe New York Times, said dril was a major influence on the spread ofdialogue, written in the same method as screenwriting, as a comedic writing style on Twitter.[29]
Dril has been identified as one of the "most revered"[12] and "quintessential"[30] accounts associated with the "Weird Twitter" scene, a loosesubculture of associated users who share a surreal, ironic, subversive sense of humor.[31][32][33][34] dril was one of many Weird Twitter personalities who migrated to Twitter fromSomething Awful's FYAD board and carried over the forum'sin-jokes and tone.[9][35] Like others on Weird Twitter, dril's tweets have been described as having adadaist sensibility.[36] Writing forComplex, Brenden Gallagher compared dril to a musician who refuses tosell out or anauteuristindie filmmaker, as Twitter's version of "the enigmatic figure that even [an art form's] best known practitioners look to with reverence".[8] Sean T. Collins described dril's humor as a "blend of fist-on-the-table bluster, abject confusion and burned-toast syntax", noting the influence of surreal humor found inMonty Python (especially thesketches from their showMonty Python's Flying Circus andTerry Gilliam's animations) andAdult Swim shows likeSpace Ghost Coast to Coast andTim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job![37] Collins called dril's tweets "a new way to be funny, with a rhythm and vocabulary all their own. I love it."[37]
Most of dril's writing is understood to be absurd, surreal, ironic, or nonsensical.[38] An article about dril inThe Oxford Student singled out this 2011 dril tweet as the account's guiding "manifesto":[39]
Avatar of wint
wint
@dril
fuck "jokes". everything i tweet is real. raw insight without the horse shit. no, i will NOT follow trolls. twitter dot com. i live for this
Providing an ostensibly out-of-character statement toBuzzFeed for anoral history on "Weird Twitter" in 2013, dril commented on the nature of his work and motivation:
Twitter, as I understand it, is a sort of "Hell" that I was banished to upon death in my previous life. In this abstract realm, the only thing I am certain of is that my cries are awarded "Favs" or "RTs" when they are particularly miserable or profane. These ethereal merits do nothing to ease my suffering, but I have deliriously convinced myself that gathering enough of them will impress my unseen superiors and grant me a promotion to a higher plane of existence. This is my sole motivation.[31]
In a 2017 Reddit AMA, he commented:
my friend told me to join twitter ten years ago and i thought it looked dumb as shit so i tried posting the worst things i could think of to destroy it and it didnt work[dril 12]
Dan Hitchens at Christian journalFirst Things noted, in an article about the use ofirony on social media, that "[m]uch of the art of Twitter consists in appearing to put forward a position while giving the impression that you might be kidding", citing American authorDavid Foster Wallace's warnings about the pervasiveness of irony in modern culture.[40] According to Hitchens, dril is the "cult account that towers above the rest" in his mastery of irony, and dril's "inspired errors in spelling, logic, and decorum can only be produced by a clever creator, but the creator never lets the mask slip. Half the joke is our joint awareness of @dril's lack of self-awareness."[40]
Although dril's content is typically absurd or nonsensical, some have noted an undercurrent of satire orsocial commentary in dril's tweets.[39][32] Surveying Weird Twitter forComplex, Gallagher commented that dril's "vicious satire ofconservatives,gamers,conspiracy theorists, and other less savory aspects of the Internet is always on point, always hilarious, always in character."[8] Fellow Weird Twitter user @rare_basement said dril's "trolling [of]Penn State fans duringthe molestation scandal was so brilliant, always on the right side of the issue, but super funny and subtle about it."[31] Although dril does not avow an explicit political identity, the account's politics are generally identified asleftist, an alignment common among Weird Twitter users.[9] However, the abstraction and vagueness of dril's tweets have allowed them to be spread and repurposed by people of varying ideologies across the political spectrum.[9][41] Celebrities, journalists, and former members of bothRepublican andDemocratic presidential administrations follow dril,[41] and even the far-rightBreitbart News has quoted dril on its Twitter feed.[9]
Dril tweets often refer to his relationships with family members—particularly an unnamed wife/ex-wife, and numerous sons—in a manner reminiscent of father figures in American sitcoms likeMarried... with Children.[9]Tom Whyman forThe Outline described dril as "at once married and divorced (from the same essential 'wife')".[23]Jia Tolentino, a staff writer forThe New Yorker, credited dril as an originator of the "large adult son"trope.[42] The trope, which Tolentino described as commonplace across social media and especially onlinesports journalism, involves particular observations of hapless male behavior that is "endlessly excusable: though [the large adult son] does nothing right, he can do no wrong."[42] The character of dril repeatedly refers to his "sons", who are usually involved in the kind of "classic large-adult-son behavior" Tolentino describes as "alarming, with a whiff of the surreal".[42] The sons are compared toDonald Trump's sons, particularlyDonald Jr. andEric Trump, as well asMike Huckabee's sons.[42][43] dril's regular posts about his disastrous marriage have also been compared to thewife guy stereotype that became popular in the late 2010s, of a man who gains attention on social media for posting about his wife, although dril's posts on the subject predate the emergence of this stereotype.[44][45]
Besides the character's family, other fictitious recurring characters in dril's tweets are an internet user named 'digimonotis', with whom dril is locked in aflame war after a prior falling-out,[9] and "the boys", a group of friends with similarly bizarre personality characteristics to dril.[37]
LikeDante orShakespeare, Dril is a creator ofvernacular: If you've ever tweeted aboutthe boys being back in town,[dril 13] or bemoaned some group of people being at it again,[dril 14] or ruminated on things "they" won't even let you do,[dril 15] or asked for budgeting help because your family is dying,[dril 16] you're quoting Dril, maybe without even consciously realizing it by now ... [T]hrough sheer force of genius, his sense of humor has become everyone else's as well.
References to dril's tweets have become part of thevernacular ofInternet slang. Some of dril's distinctive phrases have become so ubiquitous that they are used even by those who are unaware of the phrases' origin.[2][41][46] Although dril's biggest influence is on Twitter, his tweets are also popular on other social media platforms—for example, meme-aggregating groups on Facebook commonly share his content,[47] and severalTumblr users and trends have referenced and been influenced by dril.[48][49][50] There was aKnow Your Meme guide to dril in 2014, at a time whenKYM pages for individual Twitter users were comparatively rare.[8]
A common piece of conventional wisdom on Twitter holds that it is possible to find a dril Tweet that corresponds to virtually any situation or statement,[9][51][52] leading to the saying "There's always a dril Tweet."[53][54][55] As an example, the dril Tweet below has been widely referenced after a person apologizes for making a dramatically offensive and obviously incorrect statement:[56]
Avatar of wint
wint
@dril
issuing correction on a previous post of mine, regarding the terror groupISIL. you do not, under any circumstances, "gotta hand it to them"
As described by Purdom, finding the dril tweet that matches an event or statement has become an onlineparlor game, made possible because dril had "rendered a tightly written comedic exaggeration of every daily outrage and conflict from thenews cycle in which we find ourselves trapped."[9] Purdom also found that dril's early preoccupations and sensibility had an outsized, "Velvet Underground-like influence on the tenor of the internet to come."[9] By the end of 2017, the staff ofDeadspin declared that "comparing everything to @dril" was a trend that "should die" in 2018, asserting that dril himself remained funny but dril comparisons had become an overused, lazy trope, because too many Twitter users were relying on dril references "as a substitute for an actual joke."[52] Until 2021, dril's first tweet, "no", was used by dril as his "pinned tweet", a feature of Twitter that allows one tweet the user considers to be particularly important to be "pinned" out of chronological order at the top of a Twitter feed. Despite, or because of, its lack of context, it has amassed thousands of likes and retweets. According to Will Oremus atSlate, the popularity of the "no" tweet is an example of how "Themetadatais the message" on social media, as metrics like retweets provide important context and carry independent meaning, akin to alaugh track on TV.[57][58]
Other social media users frequently quote,recontextualize, orremix dril tweets for their own satirical purposes, and some accounts are even exclusively dedicated to this purpose.[39] One such account, @EveryoneIsDril, shares screenshots of tweets by other people that look like dril's typing mannerisms.[39] Another, "wint MP" or @parliawint, attaches dril tweets styled liketeletextclosed captions to images fromBBC News of British politicians and journalists speaking.[28] Although seeminglyniche, the wint MP account garnered 14,000 followers by May 2017. Tom dissonance, the creator of wint MP, attributed the account's success to its functioning as a joke on multiple levels, and for multiple audiences: "there are people who get the in-jokey references; there's a broader level of people who get politics and dril, and understand the significance of one commenting on another; and beyond that there are people who just appreciate an official figure in a suit saying something ridiculous. It's an onion of silliness."[28] Koshy commented that wint MP "stands out from traditional forms of satire because it has nonormative force. It recommends nothing aboutthe way things should be. The political field it presents is slack-jawed, demented, putrid and amoral – there is no value beyond the scope of its image."[28]
Not all satirical riffing on dril is political in nature; for example, the account @drilmagic attracted thousands of followers presenting mashups of dril tweets and cards from the gameMagic: The Gathering.[59] Ben Wilinofsky, a card player who contributed to @drilmagic, said the account and its format became a success because "Magic has a very self-serious lore that is greatfoil for an account that so often has the self-serious in its crosshairs."[59] Several attempts have been made to createAI text generators (often manually curated) that create messages in the style of dril tweets.[60][61][62][63]
There are several people whose voices on social media are often compared to dril's—the musician and actorIce-T is one[64][65]—butDonald Trump is likely the most common comparison. Commentators have frequently compared dril to Trump (and vice versa), particularlyTrump's voice on Twitter and other social media platforms.[9] According to Purdom, "Both are aging, endlessly aggrieved white men who seemingly do not understand core components of the internet, yet they perfectly embody its anonymous rage, its ability to turn people into lunatics being swarmed and eaten alive by enemies and trolls."[9]
In a 2016 article forNew York magazine, Brian Feldman argued that Trump should choose dril as his vice-presidential running mate because the writer perceived commonalities between dril's "incoherent,libidinous, authoritariancomment-spam" and Trump's own campaign tweeting.[66] In a joke about Trump's use of social media, journalist andMSNBC hostChris Hayes said that protestors should yell at Trump tolog off to "see if they can get him to recreate that @dril Tweet",[67] a reference to the following:
Avatar of wint
wint
@dril
who the fuck is scraeming 'LOG OFF' at my house. show yourself, coward. i will never log off
Eve Peyser, in aGizmodo article declaring the2016 presidential election was "the Weird Twitter election", had earlier compared the same dril tweet to the "tone, structure and message" of a Trump tweet.[68] David Covucci atThe Daily Dot coined "Dril's Law", anadage stating that "[f]or every single thing Donald Trump has tweeted, Dril did it earlier and better."[69] Covucci also asked: "What if Donald Trump is @dril? Would it be any stranger than Donald Trump being president of the United States?"[69] Responding to Covucci's question, Anna North wrote inThe New York Times that "another explanation" for the similarity between dril and Trump "seems more likely: Donald Trump's Twitter presence isn'tabsurdist, it's justabsurd."[70]
A large heap ofcorncobs. A misunderstanding over a reference to dril's "corncob" tweet led one journalist to quip: "The lesson here is clear. Always check for @dril references before you send that Tweet."[71]
In 2011, dril tweeted the following:
Avatar of wint
wint
@dril
"im not owned! im not owned!!', i continue to insist as i slowly shrink and transform into a corn cob
The tweet describes an argument or similar situation in which one participant has clearly been "owned" but refuses to acknowledge it or to take a break, instead doubling down and insisting beyond any credibility that they have not been owned.[72]
Shortly after it was posted, Twitter users began to use screenshots of the corncob tweet to point out when a person refused to acknowledge losing an argument or suffering some other humiliation.[73] By 2017, the word "corncob" by itself had become common slang on Twitter for this purpose.[73]The Ringer's Kate Knibbs observed that, while "corncob" as slang remained limited to communities on Twitter, the "corncob" archetype is universal and identifiable throughout contemporary culture.[74] According to Knibbs, "thecondition of being a corn cob—of allowing yourself to be defined by and reduced to a piercing insistence that a perceived slight has not diminished you—[has] spread far beyond a small corner of Twitter."[74] Among public figures whose behavior was described as fitting the "corncob" archetype, Knibbs listed Donald Trump,Julian Assange, actressLouise Linton,Kim Kardashian's friendJonathan Cheban,Kanye West (noting his numerous outbursts and 2016 song "Famous"), andTaylor Swift (noting her 2017 song "Look What You Made Me Do").[74]
The term "corncob" became controversial after the reference was used in a meme with leftist criticisms of then-Senator (and later Vice President)Kamala Harris. The political commentatorAl Giordano asserted, citing a datedUrban Dictionary definition of "corncobbed", that "[e]very cretin who has spread this meme needs to reckon with how it uses 'corncob', arape culture andhomophobic term popular among dudebros",[71][75][73] confusing the word with the slang termcornhole.Neera Tanden, the president of theCenter for American Progress and an advisor on Hillary Clinton's2016 campaign, called on a Twitter user—anOhio State student—to "denounce" the corncob meme.[72] Various news publications reported on the story, and noted that the fast pace of Twitter discourse and unusual slang and in-jokes meant that a misunderstanding risked embarrassment and mocking.[71][72][75] Amelia Tait, writer of an "internet dictionary"column in theNew Statesman, even wrote that Giordano had "exposed [himself] as ignorant of online culture" and had, himself, been corncobbed.[73]
The term resurfaced in March 2019, when the official campaign account for Senate Majority LeaderMitch McConnell used it to ridiculeAlexandria Ocasio-Cortez by superimposing an image of a corncob onto Ocasio-Cortez's face.[76]
Triple parentheses, or "echoes", are used online by thealt-right as anantisemitic symbol to highlight the names of Jews. Journalist Jay Hathaway wrote that most of dril's followers understood the tweet to be an ironic joke exploring the uncertain "etiquette around this very 2016 expression of bigotry ... Can a non-Jew apply the (((echoes))) to his own name as a show of allyship? Is it OK to use the parentheses in a joke at the white supremacists' expense? There's no clear consensus."[77]
As the "(((Keebler Elves)))" tweet spread, some far-right accounts praised dril, interpreting the tweet as acovert signal of genuine antisemitic views.[77] Others criticized the tweet as bigoted, even if the intent wasironic, or at least inpoor taste.[11][77] In response to the controversy, dril alternated between dismissing those who believed he was an antisemite and making sarcastic promises to become "less racist" with the help of donations.[11][dril 21] Writer Alexander McDonough said dril's "refusal to clarify his views speaks to his trust in his audience to 'get' his jokes" and to dril's confidence in hisprivacy.[11] "Likewise," McDonough wrote, "[dril's] audience trusts him to make pointed satire that crosses boundaries but is never hateful. The joke is always on himself or an entrenched elite, dril neverpunches down."[11] According to McDonough, the controversy did not seem to have any long-term impact on dril's popularity.[11] In the Jewish magazineTablet, Armin Rosen called the tweet "an obviously satirical performance of anti-Jewish bigotry" and "the only funny anti-Semitism meta-controversy in the history of the internet."[41]
Dril has been outspoken in his criticism ofElon Musk'sstewardship as CEO of Twitter, particularly Musk's changes to theTwitter verification system. On November 9, 2022, after Twitter began attaching blue checkmarks to paid Twitter Blue subscribers, dril said he would "absolutely block on sight" anyone with a paid blue checkmark and he started a #BlockTheBlue hashtag.[78]
Avatar of wint
wint
@dril
you just paid $8 to eat my ass stupid #BlockTheBlue
Dril revived his #BlockTheBlue campaign in late April 2023, when Twitterremoved checkmarks from legacy verified accounts, telling journalist Matt Binder, "I am actively rooting for the downfall of twitter. I hope to sabotage their efforts to become profitable, no matter how futile, in the hopes that they will eventually close up shop and release us all from this toilet."[79] He described the users paying for Twitter Blue as "dead-eyed cretins who are usually trying to sell you something stupid"[79] and "the most dog shit accounts on here."[dril 23]
On April 22, Twitter gave dril and Binder blue checks on their accounts, even though they had not subscribed to Twitter Blue.[80] Dril then repeatedly changed his display name in an effort to remove the blue checkmark, which in turn was reinstated several times.[80] His display name settled on "slave toWoke". Afterward, when numerous other legacy verified accounts were appended with involuntary blue checkmarks despite not paying for Twitter Blue, dril reposted a suggestion that the practice may violate the federalLanham Act's prohibitions onfalse endorsements and quipped "its ok [Musk] fired the people in charge of telling him its illegal."[81]
A few days later, dril created an account onBluesky—a decentralized social network presented as an alternative to Twitter—during the app's invite-onlyearly access phase.[82] This made him the firstbona fide celebrity user on the platform, according toForbes. He described Twitter's algorithms as "more aggressively prioritizing moronic political commentators and crypto scammers" while not serving desired content, but cast doubt that Bluesky could remain a "last bastion against ad bots, AI crap, and nefarious algorithms" for so long as corporate executives had the opportunity "to break the dam so all that sewage can flow in".[83]
In addition to his tweets, Dochney has many visual art side projects and collaborations with other artists. He has made several animations, including a short film titledCOW-BOY[dril 24][dril 25] and a fictional series about the attempts ofSouth Park co-creatorTrey Parker andGreen Day drummerTré Cool to rename the month of April "Treypril/Trépril" and "one policeman's mission to stop them at any cost."[12] Dochney has expressed interest in creating further animated films,[note 2] but said he would prefer to work on projects separate from his "dril" identity.[dril 25]
Dochney worked onBear Stearns Bravo, an interactive video series that was the sequel to theHorse ebooks Twitter account.[13] He designed the cover of the 2016vaporwave/funk albumCyber-Vision by Drew Fairweather ("Drew Toothpaste"), best known for the webcomicsToothpaste for Dinner andMarried to the Sea.[84] Dochney wrote forHiveswap, a 2017 video game based on the webcomicHomestuck.[dril 5][dril 6]Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff and the Quest for the Missing Spoon, a book based on astory within a story inHomestuck,[85] lists dril as a contributing author and artist alongsideHomestuck creator Andrew Hussie andGunshow author KC Green.[2][86] Dril was one of several artists who contributed illustrations for thecard gameThe Devil's Level, based on the Twitter accountda share z0ne.[87]
In October 2019, dril announced that he and comedian Derek Estevez-Olsen were launching a web series calledTruthpoint: Darkweb Rising forAdult Swim.[88] The show, a parody ofInfoWars, streams from Adult Swim's website on Wednesdays at midnight.[dril 28] In the series, Dochney performs as dril wearing arubber mask of an old man's face.[89] In February 2021, dril, Estevez-Olsen, and collaborator Pierce Campion released the shortVirtual Prison as a pilot for a potential series on Adult Swim.[90]
In February 2021, dril announced that he had begun developing aside-scrolling video game in his spare time, having done all the coding and artwork by himself until that point. With the working titlecopgame, the project "follows the quest of a silent protagonist who stumbles upon the gift of immortality in a dangerous future where TopInfluencers and corrupt hollywood guys maintain a cruel grip on society."[91]
In January 2017, dril opened aPatreon account for fans to make monthly payments in support of his tweets and various future projects, including "video, illustration, and long-form writing."[92][32] On the Patreon, dril described his plans for two book projects: an elaborate art book "with a narrative adjacent to the 'Mythos' surrounding my posts" and a "best of"-style compilation of tweets as acoffee table book with bonus content.[dril 29] The account's monthly revenue was $2,200 as of October 2017[9] and $1,468 as of April 2023.[3] Dochney said he earned "as much money as aKmart manager or something" from his Patreon and other dril-related endeavors, which are his primary source of income.[3]
Dril published his first book,Dril Official "Mr. Ten Years" Anniversary Collection, in August 2018.[93] The book compiles the account's best tweets from its first ten years, as selected by the author, along with new original illustrations.[93] A second book,The Get Rich and Become God Method, was published in 2020.[94][95][7] His third,The Dril Archives, was published in December 2022. It contains 10,000 posts and was released simultaneously in four editions, each being a different ordering: chronologically (titledEternal), alphabetically (Refined), by most likes (Beloved) and randomly (Chaotic).[dril 30] Dril revealed he had written another book, titledHow to Cheat at Casino Games by Being a Bitch, at aTruthpoint live performance in January 2023, when a supposed raffle to give a single copy of the book to an audience member instead ended with dril ripping up the printed manuscript in a performative rage. The pages were thrown to the crowd; based on recovered portions of the text,How to Cheat at Casino Games by Being a Bitch did appear to be a new original comedic narrative, not just a stage prop for the show.[3]
Over time, dril has grown from a relatively obscure Twitter account with a smallcult following to a widely followed, well-known account on the site. In October 2012, dril had only 23,000 followers.[96] That number had grown to 166,000 by December 2014,[97] and then 567,000 by May 2017.[11] As of January 2021, dril had reached 1.6million followers.[98] Unlike most comedians with large Twitter followings, dril became popular without a public reputation or career outside of the platform.[46] In March 2023, a report from the media outletPlatformer revealed that Twitter had included dril on a secret list of 35 "VIP" accounts whosereach was amplified by its algorithms, alongside such users as Twitter CEOElon Musk, PresidentJoe Biden, and basketball starLeBron James.[99]
Following dril has often been described—sometimes in a half-serious ortongue-in-cheek manner, other times sincerely—as one of the few gooduses of Twitter.[100][101][102] In November 2017, shortly after the doxing incident, dril was called "arguably the most iconic Twitter account in the history of social media [and] practically internet royalty" inThe A.V. Club[103] and "one of the internet's most unlikely treasures" inSlate.[14] In December 2019, Katie Notopoulos ofBuzzFeed News called dril "Without a doubt [...] the most important person on Twitter of the 2010s."[104]
We can thank Twitter for mobilizing dissent, humanizing celebrities, and @dril.
@dril is frequently listed among the funniest or best Twitter accounts. In 2012,The Daily Dot cited dril as one of the funniest accounts on Twitter and noted that reading dril's "[d]arkly funny ... odd, provocative, and clever" tweets "simultaneously brings a sense of head-scratching wonder and slightly uncomfortable chortles."[96] Max Read, then an editor ofGawker, named dril one of the publication's "heroes" of 2013 in a year-in-review piece.[106] According to Read, dril's writing stood out in a paranoidweb landscape overrun byspambots and covert corporate marketing:
Dril is not a bot. Dril is not a human. Dril is a psychicMarkov chain whose input is the American internet. Dril is an intestine swollen with gas and incoherent politics and obscure signifiers and video-game memes and bile. Dril will not lie to you. Dril will not fool you. Dril is not a hoax. Dril is not a put-on. Dril is the only writer on the internet you can trust.[106]
Paste included dril on its lists of best Twitter accounts every year between 2013 and 2016,[97][107][108][109] and the comedy siteSplitsider (later merged intoVulture) named dril one of the funniest accounts of 2017.[110] ThePen & Pencil Club, a Philadelphia-based journalism association, nominated dril for an award honoring the best "Non-Traditional News Provider" of 2017; he lost.[6] For a March 2019 feature commemorating the 30th anniversary ofTim Berners-Lee's invention of theWorld Wide Web,The Verge listed @dril among the greatest websites, people, and technologies inweb history.[111] Later that year,The A.V. Club ranked dril sixth on its list of the "best, worst, and weirdest things" on the Internet in the 2010s.[112]
Individual dril tweets have also been lauded by the press. At the occasion of Twitter's tenth anniversary, bothGQ andNewsweek named this dril tweet among the best and/or funniest tweets of all time:[113][114]
Avatar of wint
wint
@dril
Food $200 Data $150 Rent $800 Candles $3,600 Utility $150 someone who is good at the economy please help me budget this. my family is dying
The same tweet had also been listed among the site's funniest byBuzzFeed in 2014.[115] The "corncob" tweet was listed as the 8th most "canonical" tweet of all time in 2017 byMic, whose Miles Klee wrote it was "categorically impossible" to select the single best dril tweet.[116] Another dril tweet—"IF THE ZOO BANS ME FOR HOLLERING AT THE ANIMALS I WILL FACE GOD AND WALK BACKWARDS INTO HELL"—was ranked among the site's "greatest" byThought Catalog in 2013.[117]Slate counted one of his tweets among the best sentences written in 2017, ranking dril alongside such writers asUmberto Eco,Ta-Nehisi Coates,Anne Carson,Mohsin Hamid,Jennifer Egan,Durga Chew-Bose,John Darnielle, andDaniel Dennett.[118]
^Dochney confirmed that his identity had been uncovered "plenty of times" before the doxing, but these posts had not attracted significant attention or publicity.[dril 3]
^When asked about the status of the "Treypril" series on hisTumblr in April 2014, dril responded that "the police won",[dril 26] implying that the series was finished. He then posted used and unused image assets from the series.[dril 27]
^dril (November 30, 2017)."everything's normal".Patreon.Archived from the original on December 22, 2017. RetrievedDecember 21, 2017.(subscription required)
^abPJ Vogt, Alex Goldman (February 4, 2015)."Back End Trouble".Reply All (Podcast). No. 12.Gimlet Media. Event occurs at 20:36. Archived fromthe original on April 10, 2015. RetrievedAugust 24, 2017.ALEX GOLDMAN: 'The quintessential Weird Twitterer is dril.'
^abcKelly, Tiffany (August 3, 2017)."How a Kamala Harris meme turned into a fight over corncobs".The Daily Dot.Archived from the original on August 26, 2017. RetrievedAugust 24, 2017.To navigate Twitter in 2017, you need to keep up with many inside jokes, memes, and quotes that change on a daily basis. It's easy to become confused about why something is trending. But doing research before tweeting about it usually pays off. Otherwise, you're setting yourself up for a roast. ... The lesson here is clear. Always check for @dril references before you send that tweet.
^Brogan, Jacob (December 14, 2017)."The 19 Best Sentences of 2017".Slate.Archived from the original on December 17, 2017. RetrievedDecember 18, 2017.im afraid i must say that i do not find the mysteries featured on "scooby-doo" challenging enough .
.jpg)
.jpg)
