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 identifier 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 become a popular and influential Twitter user with 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. Dril was identified as Paul 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 at The Ringer.Beyond tweeting, Dochney funds his work through Patreon, has created animated 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 called Truthpoint: Darkweb Rising, an InfoWars parody co-created with comedian Derek Estevez-Olsen for Adult Swim. Writers have praised dril for his originality and humor; for example, poet Patricia Lockwood said of him: "he is a master of tone, he is a master of character". Dochney was born in June 1987. 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. He graduated from Haddonfield Memorial High School. After dropping out of college on his first attempt, he restarted at Wilmington University in Delaware and attained a BA in media design (i.e., graphic and web design). He moved to Philadelphia in the late 2010s. By the early 2020s, Dochney resided in Greater Los Angeles.

Dochney was an avid Internet user from early childhood. By the 2000s, he was posting at the Something Awful forums under the name "gigantic drill". He spent most of his time posting artwork to the site's "Fuck You and Die" (FYAD) forum. 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. Dril joined Twitter about two years after its launch, adopting the handle "@dril" because the correctly spelled "@drill" had already been taken. Dril sent his first tweet, the single word "no", on September 15, 2008.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." The @dril account then remained silent on Twitter for nine months before his second tweet—"how do i get cowboy paint off a dog ."—and has posted regularly in the years since.