Dril

About

@Dril is a novelty Twitter account which gained a large fan following through its seemingly nonsensical tweets, similar to the Horse_ebooks Twitter account.

Origin

The Twitter account @dril posted its first tweet on September 15th, 2008, with a simple message only reading “No” (shown below). The identity of the account’s author remains unknown, however, the profile description links to a mysterious website at Wint.co.^[5]

no
— wint (@dril) 15 september 2008

As of March 2014, the account has posted over 4,000 tweets and managed to garner nearly 95,000 followers. The mostly random tweets by the account often rack up hundreds of retweets and favorites, and screen captures of the tweets are often shared on other platforms such as Tumblr.^[19]^[20]

Spread

While the account already gained popularity and attention on Twitter and other platforms, one of the first websites to pick up on the novelty Twitter account was the entertainment website Head of Rothchild^[3]^[4] on October 19th, 2011, where he became their first and eventually only inductee to their Twitter hall of fame, and was again mentioned in a tribute on February 5th, 2013. Throughout 2012, the Twitter handle gained more attention and was mentioned in various top Twitter account rankings, such as on Mashable,^[8] Bite.ca,^[9] The Daily Dot^[10] and Complex.^[7] That same year, @dril was also mentioned on the IGN forums^[11] and in a Something Awful Twitter Tuesday post.^[6] Tweets attributed to the account have been featured on the Twitter: The Comic Tumblr blog on at least two occasions, the first on December 26th, 2012 (shown below, left),^[12] and the second on June 13th, 2013 (shown below, right).^[13] The comics managed to gather 250 and 5,800 notes respectively, as of March 2014.

Starting in 2013, the total number of @Dril’s followers began to grow exponentially, as shown in a The Daily Dot article^[10] in October 2012, at the time of which the Twitter still had only 23,000 followers. @Dril also managed to gain various awards on Favstar.fm^[14] and belongs to the top 0.5% of social media users on Twtrland.^[15] The most popular tweet by the account was made on July 28th, 2013,^[16] with over 6,800 favorites and 6,200 retweets as of March 2014 (shown below).

if your grave doesnt say "rest in peace" on it you are automatically drafted into the skeleton war
— wint (@dril) 28 juli 2013

Identity

Not much is known about the identity of the Twitter handle. Following the revelation^[17] of the owner of the Horse_ebooks Twitter handle being Buzzfeed employee Jacob Bakkila on September 24th, 2013, Bakkila claimed to know the identity behind dril. Bakkila shared that he was hired by dril in the past for a project, that dril was possibly a graphic designer and lived in the tri-state area (New York, New Jersey and Connecticut). Bakkila also connected Buzzfeed to dril where they got him to participate in an oral history of Weird Twitter accounts,^[18] in which dril attempted to dispel various myths surrounding the account.

Ok, I was considering sending a response “in character”, but I thought that this would probably be a good opportunity to let people know who I am and what exactly I’m trying to do. People seem to have the idea that I’m this really “wacky” guy who behaves rather similarly to his offbeat twitter persona in real life, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Please allow me to dispel some of the myths out there and let people know what I’m all about.

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.

As for this “Weird Twitter” phenomenon, I believe it’s simply a label that many people in social media loosely attach to a movement of ironic, satirical posts pioneered by the account “@kfc_colonel”. Nobody knows who operates this account, but for years he has been impersonating a dead fast food mogul and asking his followers bizarre personal questions, usually regarding their consumption of KFC products. His influence inspired comedians to further the movement by creating accounts of a similar vein, such as “@Pepsi”, “@Pizzahut”, and “@mtn_dew”, to name a few. I would suggest checking these guys out if you’re into some real subversive social commentary.

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