Who is Dril? The mysterious account feuding with Elon Musk

A handful of outspoken Elon Musk critics have been given a blue tick who really don’t want it, including one of the most mysterious accounts on Twitter.

First we had Stephen King, LeBron James and William Shatner - and now one of the internet’s most infamous s***posters is getting the same treatment.

Dril is one of the most popular users on the platform, and he’s been feuding with Musk in recent days in response to the changes he’s made on the site.

But who is he, and what’s his feud with Musk all about? Here’s everything you need to know.

Who is Dril?

Dril is a Twitter user with more than 1.8million followers. Since he joined in 2008, he’s become well known for his often deranged and surreal posts.

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Describing the tweets is pretty difficult in itself, given their completely random nature. Some of his most infamous posts include one about his ‘sick horses’.

Getty/Twitter

“i am selling six beautfiul, extremely ill, white horses. they no longer recognize me as their father, and are the Burden of my life,” he wrote.

Another saw him write: “issuing correction on a previous post of mine, regarding the terror group ISIL. you do not, under any circumstances, ‘gotta hand it to them’.”

His anonymity has been part of his allure for years. For a long time, the pixelated image of Jack Nicholson in his profile and the username “dril” was all we know about the account.

He began doing interviews with a number of different publications a few years ago though, and we learned then that his name is actually Paul Dochney.

From his profile in The Ringer we know the 35-year-old was ‘raised in New Jersey in a working-class family’, attended Wilmington University in Delaware and began posting as Dril on the cult comedy website SomethingAwful in the 00s.

The account is full of bizarre, but brilliant tweets – but more recently he’s been focusing his attention on Musk.

Twitter deleted the blue verification check marks recently as part of the introduction of the Twitter Blue subscription service costing $8 per month. Dril has never been afraid to hit out at Musk, and he had a verified tick pettily instated by Musk as part of the rollout.

However, Dril has found a way around it by changing his name a number of times which automatically removes the tick.

Their feud was summed up by user Zach Silberberg, who wrote: “So they gave dril the checkmark, but the checkmark goes away if you change your name, so dril just changed his name, but they gave him the checkmark again, so he changed his name again... this is the most looney tunes ass fight ive ever seen between a billionaire and a s***poster.”

Dril seems pretty chilled about the feud with Musk, though.

Despite the fact that he admitted Musk’s latest changes to Twitter could pretty much destroy his career, he told The Ringer: “You gotta commend Elon for doing everything in his power to wipe this nuisance website off the face of the earth.”

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