dril

@dril is a pseudonymous Twitter user best known for his idiosyncratic style of absurdist humor and non-sequiturs. The account and the character associated with the tweets are all commonly referred to as dril (the account's username on Twitter) or wint (the account's intermittent display name), both rendered lowercase but often capitalized by others. Since his first tweet in 2008, dril has gained more than 1.8 million followers.

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 of Internet 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 a doxing incident, a piece from New York suggested the author's identity. He grew up in New Jersey, raised by working-class parents: his father worked as a manager at FedEx while his mother, a homemaker, sought out odd jobs for additional income. By the early 2020s, Dochney resided in Greater Los Angeles.

Dochney was an avid Internet user from early childhood. Dril joined Twitter about two years after its launch, adopting the handle "@dril" because the correctly spelled "@drill" had already been taken. —and has posted regularly in the years since. Bakkila told BuzzFeed that dril's author was a graphic designer living somewhere in the New York metropolitan tri-state area.

On November 16, 2017, a Tumblr post identifying dril's author as Paul Dochney went viral.

The Tumblr post was described by the press as a "doxing": an unwelcome broadcasting of private personal information online. 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.

Dril addressed the doxing on his Patreon page, writing "everything's normal. i guess im 'doxxed' now. sorry. it's fine. i really give a shit." In a Reddit "ask us anything" interview, dril confirmed that he had worked on Hiveswap. 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, but also described being outed as "my Cross to bear" and said "theres nothing scandalous enough there to make it worth publicizing and looking like an ass hole while doing so." Some reporters subsequently identified dril as Dochney. Dochney gave his first fully "out-of-character" interview under his own name in April 2023, when he was profiled at The Ringer. The latter interview solidified his intent to be publicly identified under his personal name.

Character and writing style Dochney writes dril tweets in character, using an avatar of a blurry image of Jack Nicholson smiling and wearing sunglasses. Although there is no consistent narrative, Bijan Stephen at The Verge likened dril to an online version of the "wise fool" stock character.

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." 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." At Kotaku, Gita Jackson called dril a "joke account that also inadvertently catalogues ... every way to be mad online".

In a lecture given at the University of Pennsylvania, American poet Patricia Lockwood described dril as a literary alter ego of Twitter users and the Internet in general. Comparing the account's persona to Ignatius J. Reilly, the protagonist of John Kennedy Toole's novel A Confederacy of Dunces (1980), Lockwood cited dril as an example of new possibilities in first-person narrative that could be explored online. Lockwood said of dril:

Dril's tweets are, in the words of Jordan Sargent at Gawker, a series of "quietly seething and unhinged avant-garde scribblings". His tweets are deliberately peppered with odd typos like misspelled words, grammatical mistakes, punctuation errors, and eggcorns. Yohann Koshy in Vice said dril's writing "reads like obscene nonsense verse—the syntax mutilated, the humour irredeemable". In the preface to his first book, dril called his writing style "Prestige Short Prose". Pick suggested that the phrase was likely "meant to make fun of the snobby lit theory types who want to make Dril out to be some highbrow art project", but she concluded it was an apt term to describe dril's style of "part art form, part jokes to read on the toilet".

Dril has been identified as one of the "most revered" accounts associated with the "Weird Twitter" scene, a loose subculture of associated users who share a surreal, ironic, subversive sense of humor. dril was one of many Weird Twitter personalities who migrated to Twitter from Something Awful's FYAD board and carried over the forum's in-jokes and tone. Like others on Weird Twitter, dril's tweets have been described as having a dadaist sensibility. Writing for Complex, Brenden Gallagher compared dril to a musician who refuses to sell out or an auteurist indie filmmaker, as Twitter's version of "the enigmatic figure that even [an art form's] best known practitioners look to with reverence". 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 in Monty Python (especially the sketches from their show Monty Python's Flying Circus and Terry Gilliam's animations) and Adult Swim shows like Space Ghost Coast to Coast and Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! Collins called dril's tweets "a new way to be funny, with a rhythm and vocabulary all their own. I love it." An article about dril in The Oxford Student singled out this 2011 dril tweet as the account's guiding "manifesto":

Providing an ostensibly out-of-character statement to BuzzFeed for an oral history on "Weird Twitter" in 2013, dril commented on the nature of his work and motivation:

Dan Hitchens at Christian journal First Things noted, in an article about the use of irony on social media, that "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 author David Foster Wallace's warnings about the pervasiveness of irony in modern culture. 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." The trope, which Tolentino described as commonplace across social media and especially online sports 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." dril's regular posts about his disastrous marriage have also been compared to the wife 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.

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 a flame war after a prior falling-out, or bemoaned some group of people being at it again, or ruminated on things "they" won't even let you do, or asked for budgeting help because your family is dying,

salign = right

References to dril's tweets have become part of the vernacular of Internet 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. 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, and several Tumblr users and trends have referenced and been influenced by dril. There was a Know Your Meme guide to dril in 2014, at a time when KYM pages for individual Twitter users were comparatively rare. leading to the saying "There's always a dril Tweet." As an example, the dril Tweet below has been widely referenced after a person apologizes for making a dramatically offensive and obviously incorrect statement:

As described by Purdom, finding the dril tweet that matches an event or statement has become an online parlor game, made possible because dril had "rendered a tightly written comedic exaggeration of every daily outrage and conflict from the news cycle in which we find ourselves trapped."

Satirical recontextualization Other social media users frequently quote, recontextualize, or remix dril tweets for their own satirical purposes, and some accounts are even exclusively dedicated to this purpose. 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 great foil for an account that so often has the self-serious in its crosshairs."

Comparisons to Donald Trump

alt=Trump at a rally, wearing a suit and red tie, positioned in front of a microphone. A video caption promises that "we are putting our minors back to work", misspelling "miner" (mine worker) as "minor" (underage person). Screenshot of a Donald Trump video post on Facebook with a typo. Commentators have frequently drawn comparisons between Trump's social media presence and dril.

There are several people whose voices on social media are often compared to dril's—the musician and actor Ice-T is one —but Donald Trump is likely the most common comparison. Commentators have frequently compared dril to Trump (and vice versa), particularly Trump's voice on Twitter and other social media platforms. In a joke about Trump's use of social media, journalist and MSNBC host Chris Hayes said that protestors should yell at Trump to log off to "see if they can get him to recreate that @dril Tweet", a reference to the following:

Eve Peyser, in a Gizmodo article declaring the 2016 presidential election was "the Weird Twitter election", had earlier compared the same dril tweet to the "tone, structure and message" of a Trump tweet. David Covucci at The Daily Dot coined "Dril's Law", an adage stating that "or every single thing Donald Trump has tweeted, Dril did it earlier and better." Covucci also asked: "What if Donald Trump is @dril? Would it be any stranger than Donald Trump being president of the United States?"

"Corncob" block = yes

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.

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. By 2017, the word "corncob" by itself had become common slang on Twitter for this purpose. According to Knibbs, "the condition 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." Amelia Tait, writer of an "internet dictionary" column in the New Statesman, even wrote that Giordano had "exposed [himself] as ignorant of online culture" and had, himself, been corncobbed.

"(((Keebler Elves)))" controversy In June 2016, dril drew controversy for a tweet that used triple parentheses around the name of the corporate mascots of the cookie company Keebler:

Triple parentheses, or "echoes", are used online by the alt-right as an antisemitic 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." In the Jewish magazine Tablet, 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."

Dril revived his #BlockTheBlue campaign in late April 2023, when Twitter removed 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." He described the users paying for Twitter Blue as "dead-eyed cretins who are usually trying to sell you something stupid"

On April 22, Twitter gave dril and Binder blue checks on their accounts, even though they had not subscribed to Twitter Blue. Dril then repeatedly changed his display name in an effort to remove the blue checkmark, which in turn was reinstated several times.

A few days later, dril created an account on Bluesky—a decentralized social network presented as an alternative to Twitter—during the app's invite-only early access phase. This made him the first bona fide celebrity user on the platform, according to Forbes. 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".

Other projects 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 titled COW-BOY and a fictional series about the attempts of South Park co-creator Trey Parker and Green Day drummer Tré Cool to rename the month of April "Treypril/Trépril" and "one policeman's mission to stop them at any cost." implying that the series was finished. He then posted used and unused image assets from the series. but said he would prefer to work on projects separate from his "dril" identity. Dochney wrote for Hiveswap, a 2017 video game based on the webcomic Homestuck. lists dril as a contributing author and artist alongside Homestuck creator Andrew Hussie and Gunshow author KC Green. Dril was one of several artists who contributed illustrations for the card game The Devil's Level, based on the Twitter account da share z0ne.

In October 2019, dril announced that he and comedian Derek Estevez-Olsen were launching a web series called Truthpoint: Darkweb Rising for Adult Swim. The show, a parody of InfoWars, streams from Adult Swim's website on Wednesdays at midnight. In the series, Dochney performs as dril wearing a rubber mask of an old man's face. In February 2021, dril, Estevez-Olsen, and collaborator Pierce Campion released the short Virtual Prison as a pilot for a potential series on Adult Swim.

In February 2021, dril announced that he had begun developing a side-scrolling video game in his spare time, having done all the coding and artwork by himself until that point. With the working title copgame, the project "follows the quest of a silent protagonist who stumbles upon the gift of immortality in a dangerous future where Top Influencers and corrupt hollywood guys maintain a cruel grip on society."

Patreon account and books

In January 2017, dril opened a Patreon account for fans to make monthly payments in support of his tweets and various future projects, including "video, illustration, and long-form writing." The account's monthly revenue was $2,200 as of October 2017 The book compiles the account's best tweets from its first ten years, as selected by the author, along with new original illustrations. 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 (titled Eternal), alphabetically (Refined), by most likes (Beloved) and randomly (Chaotic). Dril revealed he had written another book, titled How to Cheat at Casino Games by Being a Bitch, at a Truthpoint 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. and then 567,000 by May 2017. Unlike most comedians with large Twitter followings, dril became popular without a public reputation or career outside of the platform.

Following dril has often been described—sometimes in a half-serious or tongue-in-cheek manner, other times sincerely—as one of the few good uses of Twitter. 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" in The A.V. Club and "one of the internet's most unlikely treasures" in Slate.

We can thank Twitter for mobilizing dissent, humanizing celebrities, and @dril. — Clayton Purdom — The A.V. Club and Reply All hosts PJ Vogt and Alex Goldman.

Acclaim for the account generally @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 "arkly funny ... odd, provocative, and clever" tweets "simultaneously brings a sense of head-scratching wonder and slightly uncomfortable chortles." Max Read, then an editor of Gawker, named dril one of the publication's "heroes" of 2013 in a year-in-review piece. According to Read, dril's writing stood out in a paranoid web landscape overrun by spambots and covert corporate marketing:

Dril is not a bot. Dril is not a human. Dril is a psychic Markov 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. and the comedy site Splitsider (later merged into Vulture) named dril one of the funniest accounts of 2017. The Pen & Pencil Club, a Philadelphia-based journalism association, nominated dril for an award honoring the best "Non-Traditional News Provider" of 2017; he lost. 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.

Acclaim for individual tweets Individual dril tweets have also been lauded by the press. At the occasion of Twitter's tenth anniversary, both GQ and Newsweek named this dril tweet among the best and/or funniest tweets of all time:

The same tweet had also been listed among the site's funniest by BuzzFeed in 2014. The "corncob" tweet was listed as the 8th most "canonical" tweet of all time in 2017 by Mic, whose Miles Klee wrote it was "categorically impossible" to select the single best dril tweet. 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" by Thought Catalog in 2013. Slate counted one of his tweets among the best sentences written in 2017, ranking dril alongside such writers as Umberto Eco, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Anne Carson, Mohsin Hamid, Jennifer Egan, Durga Chew-Bose, John Darnielle, and Daniel Dennett.