Dril shares his real name and thoughts on working outside of Twitter

The man behind the Nicholson avatar talked about himself and his Twitter account with The Ringer

By Reid McCarter  |  April 13, 2023 | 6:44pm
Aux Features DRIL
Dril shares his real name and thoughts on working outside of Twitter
Unfortunately, it hasn’t been Jack Nicholson all along. Photo: Gareth Cattermole

In 2017, the internet discovered the name of the guy behind Twitter’s best account, @dril. In an act of Spartacus-like solidarity, though, this information was promptly, collectively suppressed by an audience who would rather ignore the identity of the person responsible for some of the finest posting the world’s ever seen than allow it to become common knowledge.

Now, though, Dril seems more than ready to let people know he’s more than a fuzzy Jack Nicholson photo, and he’s shared a whole lot of information about himself, the background of his account, and what he’s getting up to next in a profile by The Ringer’s Nate Rogers.

The first bits to acknowledge up front: Dril is a 35-year-old named Paul Dochney. He, in Rogers’ words, “has soft features and a gentle disposition and looks something like a young Eugene Mirman.” He also seems done with anonymity, saying that it was a useful tool for many years but that people might “need to grow up” and come to terms with him being a real guy.

“Just accept that I’m not like Santa Claus,” he says. “I’m not a magic elf who posts.” Later in the piece, collaborator Derek Estevez-Olsen says that people “want [Dril] to be, like, an insane guy who lives in the woods or something” but that he’s just “a guy named Paul” who’s “fairly normal.”

More interesting than his real identity are the details Dril shares with Rogers about tweeting. Though he says he has “to get into, like, the writing mood,” Dril explains that he ”just [posts] whatever bullshit I’m thinking,” with ideas coming to him “usually when I’m driving or I’m in the shower.”

He also makes his less-than-favorable view of Twitter, which has only become more pronounced in the months since Elon Musk’s takeover, clear. Dril says he finds “a lot of aspects of Twitter very disgusting,” adding that “it would not be my first choice of websites to get popular on, but that’s just the way it goes. And I got to work with that.”

He says that “posting is not something you want to do forever” and tells Rogers that he wonders “whether Twitter’s demise could potentially force him to ‘grow in ways I never thought possible.’” Dril also added, in one of the best quotes from the profile, “You gotta commend Elon for doing everything in his power to wipe this nuisance website off the face of the earth.”

Naturally, then, his recent move to Los Angeles was motivated by a desire to, in his words, “get a job entertaining in some capacity.” Currently, that involves working on ideas for a new version of the show Truthpoint and figuring out how to leverage the enormous success of his Twitter account into something the entertainment industry can understand and actually pay him for creating.

In years past, Dril has expanded beyond Twitter with projects like TV shows, a video game, and books. The profile suggests that these non-Twitter media are where his interests really lie, which is both totally understandable and a bit melancholy, given that a potential end to Dril’s prolific posting would also mark the end of an entire era of internet history.

To read the rest of the profile, click on over here.

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