At first blush this might sound stupid. But, counterpoint: no it isn’t.
March 26, 2019 10:37 AM Subscribe
Buddy, they don’t even let ME award the noble prize
posted by The Whelk at 10:48 AM on March 26, 2019 [28 favorites]
posted by The Whelk at 10:48 AM on March 26, 2019 [28 favorites]
Few people will ever write anything as good as "I will face god and walk backwards into hell."
posted by Mavri at 10:49 AM on March 26, 2019 [79 favorites]
posted by Mavri at 10:49 AM on March 26, 2019 [79 favorites]
im the only guy who knows how to call out the bull shit of society the smart way. and against all odds i do it
for free 10:24 PM - 19 Jun 2017
I mean he's not wrong
posted by mcmile at 10:54 AM on March 26, 2019 [10 favorites]
for free 10:24 PM - 19 Jun 2017
I mean he's not wrong
posted by mcmile at 10:54 AM on March 26, 2019 [10 favorites]
I don't get the love for drill. He has an amusing or clever tweet about as often (and of about the same quality) as dozens of other tweeters who get retweeted into my timeline now and then. He seems to be following the Twitter zeitgeist more often than driving it.
But then I remember that Twitter has 300 million users and if even 5% of those are real people, the idea of a single "Twitter zeitgeist" is ridiculously provincial.
posted by straight at 10:58 AM on March 26, 2019 [9 favorites]
But then I remember that Twitter has 300 million users and if even 5% of those are real people, the idea of a single "Twitter zeitgeist" is ridiculously provincial.
posted by straight at 10:58 AM on March 26, 2019 [9 favorites]
yes fuck dril nobble prize for my shitty mastodon and i will go to sweden and be a brave little boy
posted by phooky at 11:01 AM on March 26, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by phooky at 11:01 AM on March 26, 2019 [3 favorites]
IF THE ZOO BANS ME FOR HOLLERING AT THE ANIMALS I WILL FACE GOD AND WALK BACKWARDS INTO HELL
6:46 PM - 22 May 2012
I think many of Dril's tweets have entered the culture without anyone realizing they are Dril's tweets.
posted by matrixclown at 11:05 AM on March 26, 2019 [32 favorites]
6:46 PM - 22 May 2012
I think many of Dril's tweets have entered the culture without anyone realizing they are Dril's tweets.
posted by matrixclown at 11:05 AM on March 26, 2019 [32 favorites]
...I don't get it? These tweets seem normal?
Is this the "Lord of the Rings is generic fantasy" effect?
posted by subdee at 11:10 AM on March 26, 2019 [1 favorite]
Is this the "Lord of the Rings is generic fantasy" effect?
posted by subdee at 11:10 AM on March 26, 2019 [1 favorite]
Aka the "seinfield isn't funny" effect?
posted by subdee at 11:11 AM on March 26, 2019 [4 favorites]
posted by subdee at 11:11 AM on March 26, 2019 [4 favorites]
that's basically exactly it, subdee. the language of dril (and the rest of weird twitter) has shaped the way we talk online perhaps more than any single other influence in the last ten years (the other major force has been AAVE)
posted by JimBennett at 11:13 AM on March 26, 2019 [24 favorites]
posted by JimBennett at 11:13 AM on March 26, 2019 [24 favorites]
"Should Dril get the Nobel Prize" - the greatest thread in the history of forums, locked by a moderator after 12,239 pages of heated debate,
posted by chappell, ambrose at 11:23 AM on March 26, 2019 [22 favorites]
posted by chappell, ambrose at 11:23 AM on March 26, 2019 [22 favorites]
IF THE ZOO BANS ME FOR HOLLERING AT THE ANIMALS I WILL FACE GOD AND WALK BACKWARDS INTO HELL
6:46 PM - 22 May 2012
I think many of Dril's tweets have entered the culture without anyone realizing they are Dril's tweets.
I would have sworn that the phrase "face God and walk backwards into Hell" existed long before the internet, but a quick Google search doesn't turn up anything; I'm at work and can't take the time to dig deeper. So now I'm just dissatisfied and unsettled.
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:25 AM on March 26, 2019 [3 favorites]
6:46 PM - 22 May 2012
I think many of Dril's tweets have entered the culture without anyone realizing they are Dril's tweets.
I would have sworn that the phrase "face God and walk backwards into Hell" existed long before the internet, but a quick Google search doesn't turn up anything; I'm at work and can't take the time to dig deeper. So now I'm just dissatisfied and unsettled.
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:25 AM on March 26, 2019 [3 favorites]
arms folded, back turned to the television, refusing to "Meet the flintstones" despite the theme song's pleasposted by octobersurprise at 11:32 AM on March 26, 2019 [14 favorites]
Yes great do this. Then again my sense of humor was partially formed by lowercase shitposting (LF and YOSPOS not, like, FYAD) on Something Awful circa like 2006-2012 when I was a literal child so I guess I'm very biased
posted by Freeze Peach at 11:37 AM on March 26, 2019 [8 favorites]
posted by Freeze Peach at 11:37 AM on March 26, 2019 [8 favorites]
the language of dril (and the rest of weird twitter) has shaped the way we talk online perhaps more than any single other influence in the last ten years
It seems to me that "and the rest of weird twitter" is doing a whole heck of a lot of work in that sentence.
posted by straight at 11:41 AM on March 26, 2019 [13 favorites]
It seems to me that "and the rest of weird twitter" is doing a whole heck of a lot of work in that sentence.
posted by straight at 11:41 AM on March 26, 2019 [13 favorites]
when the sun was low in the west the dong arose and said — what little sense I once possessed has quite gone out of my head you fuckersposted by octobersurprise at 11:46 AM on March 26, 2019 [1 favorite]
fuck, I don't know, I was sure it was uncontroversial that Dril really lead weird twitter but I guess someone could sign up for PhD funding to run the numbers
posted by ominous_paws at 11:51 AM on March 26, 2019 [11 favorites]
posted by ominous_paws at 11:51 AM on March 26, 2019 [11 favorites]
I feel like people who write long thinkpieces about @dril are kind of capturing the Quinta Essentia of Not Getting It, but I guess I agree with the conclusion, if not the alchemical process that brought us there.
It seems to me that "and the rest of weird twitter" is doing a whole heck of a lot of work in that sentence.
@dril is the Elvis of weird twitter.
posted by prize bull octorok at 11:57 AM on March 26, 2019 [15 favorites]
It seems to me that "and the rest of weird twitter" is doing a whole heck of a lot of work in that sentence.
@dril is the Elvis of weird twitter.
posted by prize bull octorok at 11:57 AM on March 26, 2019 [15 favorites]
"The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking."
-Martin Heidegger
posted by clavdivs at 12:04 PM on March 26, 2019 [1 favorite]
-Martin Heidegger
posted by clavdivs at 12:04 PM on March 26, 2019 [1 favorite]
Does @dril get a lot of credit partly because he remains anonymous? (I know his identity was revealed but it seems like people kind of pretended it wasn't.) A lot of the accounts that I consider weird twitter also have a real person voice that they occasionally use to talk politics in a more straightforward way.
posted by Emmy Rae at 12:05 PM on March 26, 2019
posted by Emmy Rae at 12:05 PM on March 26, 2019
If anyone can be said to be Poet Laureate of the Internet, it's dril. Before this article it never occurred to me to think of his tweets as poetry, but so much modern poetry is so structureless, I can't imagine a definition that would include that and not this.
posted by rifflesby at 12:06 PM on March 26, 2019 [10 favorites]
posted by rifflesby at 12:06 PM on March 26, 2019 [10 favorites]
Yeah but is it Bob Dylan good
posted by From Bklyn at 12:15 PM on March 26, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by From Bklyn at 12:15 PM on March 26, 2019 [3 favorites]
Related: Buzzfeed's 2013 Oral History of Weird Twitter, featuring a Dril question.
posted by matrixclown at 12:16 PM on March 26, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by matrixclown at 12:16 PM on March 26, 2019 [1 favorite]
More recently, the phrase “ideal direction” has been interpreted to mean something more like the championing of certain liberal, humanitarian ideals, hence why so many laureates seem to be awarded the prize, at least in part, for their political commitments and beliefs . . . So does Dril's work move in an “ideal direction”? Upon proper consideration of his work, it would be hard to argue that it doesn't.
Surely he's more nihilist than anything else. You can see it in his art, too: a giant man-baby Jack Nicholson floating untethered in space. Sometimes he says something that suggests a heart through its satire, but more often than not it's this character. It's a magnificent character, too, and it does deserve some kind of recognition, although the idea of the guy behind Dril applying for writers' residencies or awards or an MFA program, going to AWP and rubbing elbows with the jury class -- only he is capable of describing what that would be like, I think.
posted by Countess Elena at 12:16 PM on March 26, 2019 [2 favorites]
Surely he's more nihilist than anything else. You can see it in his art, too: a giant man-baby Jack Nicholson floating untethered in space. Sometimes he says something that suggests a heart through its satire, but more often than not it's this character. It's a magnificent character, too, and it does deserve some kind of recognition, although the idea of the guy behind Dril applying for writers' residencies or awards or an MFA program, going to AWP and rubbing elbows with the jury class -- only he is capable of describing what that would be like, I think.
posted by Countess Elena at 12:16 PM on March 26, 2019 [2 favorites]
@radoptimist:
"I will face God and walk backwards into Hell" is a Dril tweet.posted by Lexica at 12:26 PM on March 26, 2019 [62 favorites]
"That's how it is on this bitch of an earth" is a quote from Waiting for Godot.
"Do you think that God stays in Heaven out of fear of what he has created" is a quote from SPY KIDS 2
I enjoy @dril but I also hope that future generations find him as tedious and irritating as I find Bob Dylan. Grow, children! Reject the culture of your elders, even the ones who smoke pot and seem cool right now!
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:26 PM on March 26, 2019 [18 favorites]
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:26 PM on March 26, 2019 [18 favorites]
I would have sworn that the phrase "face God and walk backwards into Hell" existed long before the internet, but a quick Google search doesn't turn up anything
And that's exactly why, five or ten years from now, everyone is going to be certain that's a quote from Shakespeare or Milton or whatever, something from the Western Literary Canon, and years after that, the quote's origin is going to be lost, until it's just a point of weird trivia that people won't believe. "I will face God and walk backwards into hell" is just that perfect.
posted by yasaman at 12:31 PM on March 26, 2019 [37 favorites]
And that's exactly why, five or ten years from now, everyone is going to be certain that's a quote from Shakespeare or Milton or whatever, something from the Western Literary Canon, and years after that, the quote's origin is going to be lost, until it's just a point of weird trivia that people won't believe. "I will face God and walk backwards into hell" is just that perfect.
posted by yasaman at 12:31 PM on March 26, 2019 [37 favorites]
@dril is the Elvis of weird twitter.
In the sense that Elvis got famous doing stuff he stole from black people?
posted by straight at 12:37 PM on March 26, 2019 [11 favorites]
In the sense that Elvis got famous doing stuff he stole from black people?
posted by straight at 12:37 PM on March 26, 2019 [11 favorites]
Also, please consider this truly excellent found poem composed of rearranged phrases from dril tweets (link goes to my tumblr because god knows what happened to the original poster, tumblr is garbage). I genuinely love the first and last stanzas:
lover, i have already accepted that i am going to
the worst of all possible hells.
assume in this scenario that i have lungs,
assuming hes never confronted with any actual tests of character;
my soul open, i am nude, shaved,
on the railroad track we made out of horse bones
...
i dont know much about solar storms
but i swear to god this is forever
im still shaking
posted by yasaman at 12:38 PM on March 26, 2019 [15 favorites]
lover, i have already accepted that i am going to
the worst of all possible hells.
assume in this scenario that i have lungs,
assuming hes never confronted with any actual tests of character;
my soul open, i am nude, shaved,
on the railroad track we made out of horse bones
...
i dont know much about solar storms
but i swear to god this is forever
im still shaking
posted by yasaman at 12:38 PM on March 26, 2019 [15 favorites]
I think what sets @dril apart from the rest of the Weird Twitter pack is a perfect alchemical combination of:
posted by Atom Eyes at 12:43 PM on March 26, 2019 [19 favorites]
- memorable, nonsensical handle (wint @dril)
- simple, iconic userpic (blurry Jack Nicholson?)
- persistant, yet unpredictable bad spelling and grammar
- perfect balance of volatility, candidness, and overconfidence
- never breaks character, ever
posted by Atom Eyes at 12:43 PM on March 26, 2019 [19 favorites]
simple, iconic userpic (blurry Jack Nicholson?)
I believe someone did a historical survey and found that the userpic has, in fact, been getting progressively blurrier over time. Which is a beautiful thing.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 12:46 PM on March 26, 2019 [31 favorites]
I believe someone did a historical survey and found that the userpic has, in fact, been getting progressively blurrier over time. Which is a beautiful thing.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 12:46 PM on March 26, 2019 [31 favorites]
it never occurred to me to think of his tweets as poetry
I mean, there's definitely an imagistic impulse behind the best of them. The finest ones work like haiku or like Ezra Pound's In a Station of the Metro—"The apparition of these faces in the crowd; / Petals on a wet, black bough."—or like a fragment from one of the Cantos—in drill's tweets the speaker's aggression, self-importance, and pettiness sometimes reads like a (good) bad Pound impression. (Now the difference between "poetry" and a twitter TL lies in selection and editing ... so ...)
posted by octobersurprise at 12:47 PM on March 26, 2019 [5 favorites]
I mean, there's definitely an imagistic impulse behind the best of them. The finest ones work like haiku or like Ezra Pound's In a Station of the Metro—"The apparition of these faces in the crowd; / Petals on a wet, black bough."—or like a fragment from one of the Cantos—in drill's tweets the speaker's aggression, self-importance, and pettiness sometimes reads like a (good) bad Pound impression. (Now the difference between "poetry" and a twitter TL lies in selection and editing ... so ...)
posted by octobersurprise at 12:47 PM on March 26, 2019 [5 favorites]
the language of dril (and the rest of weird twitter) has shaped the way we talk online perhaps more than any single other influence in the last ten years
And by Drill, don't you really mean "Deep Thoughts"?
And in a more serious vein, A Softer World? XKCD maybe?
posted by happyroach at 12:48 PM on March 26, 2019 [3 favorites]
And by Drill, don't you really mean "Deep Thoughts"?
And in a more serious vein, A Softer World? XKCD maybe?
posted by happyroach at 12:48 PM on March 26, 2019 [3 favorites]
I feel embarrassed for everyone involved.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 12:49 PM on March 26, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by Foci for Analysis at 12:49 PM on March 26, 2019 [2 favorites]
Every time I think about comedy and twitter, I'm so, so sad that Mitch Hedberg didn't get a chance to use it. It seems like it would have been a great medium for his comedic style (even without his distinctive way of saying his bits). And he would have had a lot of fun interacting with a lot of "weird twitter" or whatever you want to call that loose collective of voices. Can you imagine:
@mitchh
The depressing thing about tennis is that no matter how good I get, I'll never be as good as a wall.
6:02 PM - 3 Jul 2010
posted by barchan at 12:52 PM on March 26, 2019 [35 favorites]
@mitchh
The depressing thing about tennis is that no matter how good I get, I'll never be as good as a wall.
6:02 PM - 3 Jul 2010
posted by barchan at 12:52 PM on March 26, 2019 [35 favorites]
Does @dril get a lot of credit partly because he remains anonymous? (I know his identity was revealed but it seems like people kind of pretended it wasn't.) A lot of the accounts that I consider weird twitter also have a real person voice that they occasionally use to talk politics in a more straightforward way.
Emmy Ray
Yes, I think the fact that he's never de-anonymized, or pivoted in tone, or, hell, changed his name or avi is a BIG reason his account has transcended mere popularity and is being discussed in this sort of mythological, pulitzer-deserving manner. It's much more common for an anonymous account to get popular doing some gimmick and then completely break from it once they get big enough. @jonnysun is a good example of that. The fact that @dril hasn't is refreshing, within that larger context of the social media influencer/lifestyle trends.
posted by smokysunday at 12:53 PM on March 26, 2019 [7 favorites]
Emmy Ray
Yes, I think the fact that he's never de-anonymized, or pivoted in tone, or, hell, changed his name or avi is a BIG reason his account has transcended mere popularity and is being discussed in this sort of mythological, pulitzer-deserving manner. It's much more common for an anonymous account to get popular doing some gimmick and then completely break from it once they get big enough. @jonnysun is a good example of that. The fact that @dril hasn't is refreshing, within that larger context of the social media influencer/lifestyle trends.
posted by smokysunday at 12:53 PM on March 26, 2019 [7 favorites]
Oh absolutely, barchan. Just listen to a Mitch Hedberg album and then go on twitter, you can read 99% of tweets in that voice and cadence.
posted by rifflesby at 12:54 PM on March 26, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by rifflesby at 12:54 PM on March 26, 2019 [3 favorites]
I don't get the love for drill.
I think it depends on how you feel about the "I am an idiot man-child" genre.
If you think Adam Sandler is the greatest gift to comedy ever you will love him. If however you find Will Ferell tiresome at least dril is done in 140 characters.
posted by iamnotangry at 12:54 PM on March 26, 2019 [7 favorites]
I think it depends on how you feel about the "I am an idiot man-child" genre.
If you think Adam Sandler is the greatest gift to comedy ever you will love him. If however you find Will Ferell tiresome at least dril is done in 140 characters.
posted by iamnotangry at 12:54 PM on March 26, 2019 [7 favorites]
I think his tweets (or at least the ones I see when they get retweeted, I'm sure I miss many) have an extra touch of humor and intelligence beyond the usual crappy Twitter one-liner that make them difficult to copy.
posted by The corpse in the library at 12:59 PM on March 26, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by The corpse in the library at 12:59 PM on March 26, 2019 [3 favorites]
It's a beautiful and diverse world out there but I'm genuinely staggered that anyone can straightfacedly equate Dril with Adam Sandler, short of the most minimal effort "here's a comedy man I think is bad"
posted by ominous_paws at 1:01 PM on March 26, 2019 [57 favorites]
posted by ominous_paws at 1:01 PM on March 26, 2019 [57 favorites]
I wonder how "weird twitter" posters who weren't part of the SA FYAD community would fare trying their posting styles in FYAD. I don't use Twitter much, but when I do it's to chuckle at these kinds of goobers.
"If you think Adam Sandler is the greatest gift to comedy ever you will love him. If however you find Will Ferell tiresome at least dril is done in 140 characters."
This is an astonishingly bad characterization analogy on both ends.
posted by GoblinHoney at 1:02 PM on March 26, 2019 [15 favorites]
"If you think Adam Sandler is the greatest gift to comedy ever you will love him. If however you find Will Ferell tiresome at least dril is done in 140 characters."
This is an astonishingly bad characterization analogy on both ends.
posted by GoblinHoney at 1:02 PM on March 26, 2019 [15 favorites]
Mitch Hedberg and Jack Handy wouldn't translate all that well to Twitter because their jokes are too carefully crafted. Some of my favorite comedians are completely mediocre at Twitter because, while they are great at writing jokes, they can't manage to write them poorly enough to be funny in that specific context.
posted by Atom Eyes at 1:07 PM on March 26, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by Atom Eyes at 1:07 PM on March 26, 2019 [2 favorites]
If however you find Will Ferell tiresome at least dril is done in 140 characters
I dunno, I think dril is hilarious and have no use for Will Ferrell at all.
posted by kenko at 1:08 PM on March 26, 2019 [10 favorites]
I dunno, I think dril is hilarious and have no use for Will Ferrell at all.
posted by kenko at 1:08 PM on March 26, 2019 [10 favorites]
(I know his identity was revealed but it seems like people kind of pretended it wasn't.)
I got the impression that people found out who was behind dril and the answer was just... not very interesting. A not very well known humorist/comedian/writer. Someone not as interesting as dril.
Maybe it's because I personally saw the name once, realized I had no context for that information and no desire to build context for that information, and promptly forgot about it. I don't think my reaction was unusual.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 1:13 PM on March 26, 2019 [4 favorites]
I got the impression that people found out who was behind dril and the answer was just... not very interesting. A not very well known humorist/comedian/writer. Someone not as interesting as dril.
Maybe it's because I personally saw the name once, realized I had no context for that information and no desire to build context for that information, and promptly forgot about it. I don't think my reaction was unusual.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 1:13 PM on March 26, 2019 [4 favorites]
I loathe Adam Sandler and I often appreciate dril. But plenty of his tweets are just childish scat humor. I can easily imagine Adam Sandler saying this in that stupid voice he does.
I totally understand someone reading a few of those and deciding he's not worth the follow.
posted by Emmy Rae at 1:16 PM on March 26, 2019 [1 favorite]
I totally understand someone reading a few of those and deciding he's not worth the follow.
posted by Emmy Rae at 1:16 PM on March 26, 2019 [1 favorite]
blocked. blocked. blocked. youre all blocked. none of you are free of sin
posted by tobascodagama at 1:17 PM on March 26, 2019 [21 favorites]
posted by tobascodagama at 1:17 PM on March 26, 2019 [21 favorites]
I have no opinion on dril but this essay brought me back to Harold Pinter's absolutely withering Nobel lecture so I have to forgive it on at least those grounds.
posted by graymouser at 1:17 PM on March 26, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by graymouser at 1:17 PM on March 26, 2019 [1 favorite]
The Wikipedia page on Dril is honestly one of the best written pieces of internet scholarship that I’ve read.
posted by redct at 1:19 PM on March 26, 2019 [8 favorites]
posted by redct at 1:19 PM on March 26, 2019 [8 favorites]
Some classics I know about that haven't been posted yet
who the fuck is scraeming "LOG OFF" at my house. show yourself, coward. i will never log off -- 11:36 PM - 15 Sep 2012
And the evergreen budgeting interchange:
who the fuck is scraeming "LOG OFF" at my house. show yourself, coward. i will never log off -- 11:36 PM - 15 Sep 2012
And the evergreen budgeting interchange:
wint @dril -- 1:06 PM - 29 Sep 2013:posted by foxfirefey at 1:26 PM on March 26, 2019 [23 favorites]
Food $200
Data $150
Rent $800
Candles $3,600
Utility $150
someone who is good at the economy please help me budget this. my family is dying
craig @craigus12 -- 29 Sep 2013 -- Replying to @dril:
@dril spend less on candles
wint @dril -- 29 Sep 2013:
@craigus12 no
If we’re doing personal favourites, the McShitter thread is one of mine:
wint @dril
wint @dril
@McDonalds i have an a 1 million dollar idea that will pull your failing company directly out of the toilet. hear me outposted by chappell, ambrose at 1:34 PM on March 26, 2019 [3 favorites]
dril
who the fuck is scraeming "LOG OFF" at my house. show yourself, coward. i will never log off -- 11:36 PM - 15 Sep 2012Glenn Greenwald
No. I'll log off when I'm ready to. That hasn't happened yet. -- 9:10 PM - 10 Mar 2019posted by octobersurprise at 1:39 PM on March 26, 2019 [4 favorites]
Can't believe nobody beat me to my own favourite
"im not owned! im not owned!!", i continue to insist as i slowly shrink and transform into a corn cob.
posted by ominous_paws at 1:40 PM on March 26, 2019 [11 favorites]
"im not owned! im not owned!!", i continue to insist as i slowly shrink and transform into a corn cob.
posted by ominous_paws at 1:40 PM on March 26, 2019 [11 favorites]
If you think Adam Sandler is the greatest gift to comedy ever you will love him. If however you find Will Ferell tiresome at least dril is done in 140 characters.
To each their own, but I've never thought of Sandler or Ferrell as absurdist.
posted by Mavri at 2:27 PM on March 26, 2019 [3 favorites]
To each their own, but I've never thought of Sandler or Ferrell as absurdist.
posted by Mavri at 2:27 PM on March 26, 2019 [3 favorites]
I think about and laugh at the ISIL one, like, at least once a week. There's a whole world in that tweet alone.
posted by GalaxieFiveHundred at 2:40 PM on March 26, 2019 [6 favorites]
posted by GalaxieFiveHundred at 2:40 PM on March 26, 2019 [6 favorites]
I spend a lot of time on the web. Too much, probably. Still articles like this make me glad I'm not so 𝚎𝚡𝚝𝚛𝚎𝚖𝚎𝚕𝚢 𝚘𝚗𝚕𝚒𝚗𝚎 as to to semi-seriously write things like "the importance of the internet to human consciousness and life". Yes, dril and Weird Twitter are funny and innovative. No, MySpace losing 12 years of music is not "every bit as barbaric as the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamyan by the Taliban."
Also being avant-garde does not help one win a Nobel Prize for Literature. That was a weird argument.
posted by oulipian at 3:49 PM on March 26, 2019 [3 favorites]
Also being avant-garde does not help one win a Nobel Prize for Literature. That was a weird argument.
posted by oulipian at 3:49 PM on March 26, 2019 [3 favorites]
dril, and Twitter generally, is not for me, and that's fine. One of the benefits of the webbed world should be that we don't have to pretend all humans are variations on a single common theme anymore, although culture hasn't quite caught up to that reality yet.
I want to emphasize that I have nothing disparaging to say about dril, nor would I give him a left-handed compliment by saying he excels at a type of comedy that's generally deprecated. I trust that the people who enjoy him and find value in his work are genuine, sincere, sophisticated, and so on.
With the table set, I don't understand one of his two most famous pieces at all. I get what "theres actually zero difference between good & bad things. you imbecile. you fucking moron" means from the contexts in which it's quoted, but I have absolutely no idea whatsoever how it means what it means. The words that are written simply don't, and won't, translate for me into what people say it says, and in fact the words read to me as being the opposite of what people take it to mean.
To me, that tweet seems to be a restatement of the “There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do" quote from The Grapes of Wrath. The contexts in which it's quoted, though, seem to read it as saying the exact opposite of that--there is good and there is evil, and those things are so obvious that you're a fool if you don't recognize that.
I simply don't understand how people read the words in the tweet and derive the meaning from the words that they do. Is there anybody that can help explain?
posted by mattwan at 3:49 PM on March 26, 2019 [1 favorite]
I want to emphasize that I have nothing disparaging to say about dril, nor would I give him a left-handed compliment by saying he excels at a type of comedy that's generally deprecated. I trust that the people who enjoy him and find value in his work are genuine, sincere, sophisticated, and so on.
With the table set, I don't understand one of his two most famous pieces at all. I get what "theres actually zero difference between good & bad things. you imbecile. you fucking moron" means from the contexts in which it's quoted, but I have absolutely no idea whatsoever how it means what it means. The words that are written simply don't, and won't, translate for me into what people say it says, and in fact the words read to me as being the opposite of what people take it to mean.
To me, that tweet seems to be a restatement of the “There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do" quote from The Grapes of Wrath. The contexts in which it's quoted, though, seem to read it as saying the exact opposite of that--there is good and there is evil, and those things are so obvious that you're a fool if you don't recognize that.
I simply don't understand how people read the words in the tweet and derive the meaning from the words that they do. Is there anybody that can help explain?
posted by mattwan at 3:49 PM on March 26, 2019 [1 favorite]
Mattwan: It's a riff on the sort of Hot Take article, and particularly, the flavor of Hot Take that's where a conservative is all "WELL, ACTUALLY TRIGGER WARNINGS ARE UNNEEDED AT BEST, HARMFUL AT WORST" to use a recent example.
Have you seen that comic about centrists? It's pretty much that.
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me at 3:58 PM on March 26, 2019 [4 favorites]
Have you seen that comic about centrists? It's pretty much that.
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me at 3:58 PM on March 26, 2019 [4 favorites]
(see also, white people insisting slavery wasn't so bad.)
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me at 4:00 PM on March 26, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me at 4:00 PM on March 26, 2019 [3 favorites]
when somebody quoted that tweet at me, it was definitely to call me a moron for staking out some gray-area position in a very important internet argument we were having, if that helps
posted by prize bull octorok at 4:04 PM on March 26, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by prize bull octorok at 4:04 PM on March 26, 2019 [1 favorite]
Speaking of being really shitty at Twitter:
Official Mitch McConnell senate campaign Twitter account riffs on Dril's corncob tweet in an EPIC CLAPBACK against AOC.
posted by Atom Eyes at 4:58 PM on March 26, 2019
Official Mitch McConnell senate campaign Twitter account riffs on Dril's corncob tweet in an EPIC CLAPBACK against AOC.
posted by Atom Eyes at 4:58 PM on March 26, 2019
no
posted by bookman117 at 5:04 PM on March 26, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by bookman117 at 5:04 PM on March 26, 2019 [3 favorites]
One of the greatest unintended compliments I’ve ever received was when a friend asked me if I was “the new dril” in reference to my intentionally incoherent online presence. At the time I had no idea he was, but I now treasure the comment.
posted by constantinescharity at 5:16 PM on March 26, 2019
posted by constantinescharity at 5:16 PM on March 26, 2019
mattan, they do in fact mean the exact opposite things. However those two quotes were written decades apart and in entirety different contexts, so I suspect dril and his fans would approve of both. The culture and its definition of "virtue" is very different from what it used to be in many ways.
posted by bookman117 at 5:22 PM on March 26, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by bookman117 at 5:22 PM on March 26, 2019 [1 favorite]
I appreciate dril but not enough to follow his twitter. He gets retweeted exactly the right amount into my stream, which is every so often when he's been really great.
But I do appreciate him, and I do think he's a form of twitter-specific literature which is worth looking at seriously. Commentary isn't often surrealist, ironic, insightful, and so-in-the-moment as his, if it ever is anywhere else. And his tweets have longevity -- I get things from him from years ago being retweeted into my timeline, which always amazes me.
posted by hippybear at 5:42 PM on March 26, 2019 [7 favorites]
But I do appreciate him, and I do think he's a form of twitter-specific literature which is worth looking at seriously. Commentary isn't often surrealist, ironic, insightful, and so-in-the-moment as his, if it ever is anywhere else. And his tweets have longevity -- I get things from him from years ago being retweeted into my timeline, which always amazes me.
posted by hippybear at 5:42 PM on March 26, 2019 [7 favorites]
I simply don't understand how people read the words in the tweet and derive the meaning from the words that they do. Is there anybody that can help explain?
It's, if not exactly sarcasm, something close to it. You're meant to understand that the character speaking those words is a parody or a least a very foolish person. So you're right that the literal reading and the intended meaning are at odds, and that dissonance reinforces the humorous nature of the thing. Whereas the quote from The Grapes of Wrath is meant earnestly.
When it's used as a reaction, it's basically saying "this is the logical conclusion of whatever was just said, and that's bad".
posted by vibratory manner of working at 5:57 PM on March 26, 2019 [4 favorites]
It's, if not exactly sarcasm, something close to it. You're meant to understand that the character speaking those words is a parody or a least a very foolish person. So you're right that the literal reading and the intended meaning are at odds, and that dissonance reinforces the humorous nature of the thing. Whereas the quote from The Grapes of Wrath is meant earnestly.
When it's used as a reaction, it's basically saying "this is the logical conclusion of whatever was just said, and that's bad".
posted by vibratory manner of working at 5:57 PM on March 26, 2019 [4 favorites]
mattwan, it's satire - it exaggerates the idea so much it demonstrates its absurdity.
posted by airmail at 5:57 PM on March 26, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by airmail at 5:57 PM on March 26, 2019 [1 favorite]
Thanks for the explanations! I still don't really get it, possibly because I see centrism as separate from discussions of sin and virtue. Or, rather, I subscribe to Steinbeck's position on sin and virtue suggested by that quote--Virtue is what Our People think is good, and Sin is what Those People think is good--suggest that we should give up acting as if our political positions are morally justified and instead act on the basis of group interest. The dril quote, as it's just been explained, seems to me to just be muddying waters that we should instead be clarifying, if that makes sense--it says Those People are wrong because they're failing to act in accord with some independent external notion of morality, rather than acknowledging that They and We do not share the same foundational beliefs and developing strategies that work within that context.
Admittedly, it's harder to get people fired up when you reject the fire-and-brimstone approach, but nobody every said politics was easy.
Edit: I didn't see the last two responses before I posted, and I think I get why I don't get the dril quote better now. It doesn't work for me as satire because dril's words seem perfectly true to me--good things and bad things are the same; the label you apply to them just depends on where you're standing. Outside of an absurdly homogenous society of maybe a dozen people at most, that is why politics exists.
posted by mattwan at 6:02 PM on March 26, 2019 [3 favorites]
Admittedly, it's harder to get people fired up when you reject the fire-and-brimstone approach, but nobody every said politics was easy.
Edit: I didn't see the last two responses before I posted, and I think I get why I don't get the dril quote better now. It doesn't work for me as satire because dril's words seem perfectly true to me--good things and bad things are the same; the label you apply to them just depends on where you're standing. Outside of an absurdly homogenous society of maybe a dozen people at most, that is why politics exists.
posted by mattwan at 6:02 PM on March 26, 2019 [3 favorites]
mattwan, I hate to break it to you, but there are a lot of extremely bad people in politics right now. In the I Don't Know How To Explain To You That You Should Care About Other People sense of the word "bad".
posted by ambrosen at 6:17 PM on March 26, 2019 [10 favorites]
posted by ambrosen at 6:17 PM on March 26, 2019 [10 favorites]
if anything, "the wise man bowed his head solemnly and spoke: 'theres actually zero difference between good & bad things. you imbecile. you fucking moron'" feels like it could just as easily be about, say, Malcolm Gladwell or Freakonomics
posted by DoctorFedora at 6:40 PM on March 26, 2019 [9 favorites]
posted by DoctorFedora at 6:40 PM on March 26, 2019 [9 favorites]
"In the I Don't Know How To Explain To You That You Should Care About Other People sense of the word "bad"
Well, yeah, that's sort of my point. They don't believe that a failure to care about other people is bad. Any appeals to their conscience aren't going to work, because their conscience already justifies their actions. If you want to stop or curtail their behavior that you (and I) find bad, you have to either find a solution that circumvents or is more appealing than their existing beliefs about the way things should be or abandon our ideas about democracy (which seems to be increasingly popular among the Reddit Young Left, but to me that seems to be overly optimistic about who would win in either a shooting or a cold war).
posted by mattwan at 6:47 PM on March 26, 2019 [2 favorites]
Well, yeah, that's sort of my point. They don't believe that a failure to care about other people is bad. Any appeals to their conscience aren't going to work, because their conscience already justifies their actions. If you want to stop or curtail their behavior that you (and I) find bad, you have to either find a solution that circumvents or is more appealing than their existing beliefs about the way things should be or abandon our ideas about democracy (which seems to be increasingly popular among the Reddit Young Left, but to me that seems to be overly optimistic about who would win in either a shooting or a cold war).
posted by mattwan at 6:47 PM on March 26, 2019 [2 favorites]
I saw it as kind of a takedown on the kind of person who, having absorbed an hour's worth of ersatz Eastern Wisdom, adopts an attitude of superiority to mere mortals who still believe that things exist and that not every negative experience is simply due to a failure to be enlightened..
posted by thelonius at 6:53 PM on March 26, 2019 [11 favorites]
posted by thelonius at 6:53 PM on March 26, 2019 [11 favorites]
Thanks, thelonius! I don't know if that's what was intended, but I can certainly appreciate it from that direction.
I want to show appreciation to everyone who has responded; you've given me a lot to think about, even if it hasn't yet percolated enough to overcome my prior beliefs. I'm going to bow out now, though, because I'm afraid I might have caused a derail. Thanks again, though!
posted by mattwan at 7:05 PM on March 26, 2019 [1 favorite]
I want to show appreciation to everyone who has responded; you've given me a lot to think about, even if it hasn't yet percolated enough to overcome my prior beliefs. I'm going to bow out now, though, because I'm afraid I might have caused a derail. Thanks again, though!
posted by mattwan at 7:05 PM on March 26, 2019 [1 favorite]
I have this half-baked theory that women aren't allowed to be capital-w Weird Geniuses in the way men are, and dril is absolutely one of my current Exhibit A's on this.
posted by mostly vowels at 7:09 PM on March 26, 2019 [18 favorites]
posted by mostly vowels at 7:09 PM on March 26, 2019 [18 favorites]
Also being avant-garde does not help one win a Nobel Prize for Literature.
posted by oulipian at 6:49 PM on March 26
Taking your word for it, if anyone’s.
posted by octobersurprise at 7:14 PM on March 26, 2019 [4 favorites]
posted by oulipian at 6:49 PM on March 26
Taking your word for it, if anyone’s.
posted by octobersurprise at 7:14 PM on March 26, 2019 [4 favorites]
I have this half-baked theory that women aren't allowed to be capital-w Weird Geniuses in the way men are
Have you seen @meganamram?
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 7:16 PM on March 26, 2019 [19 favorites]
Have you seen @meganamram?
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 7:16 PM on March 26, 2019 [19 favorites]
dril never tweets over 140 characters, and I admire that.
posted by chinesefood at 7:21 PM on March 26, 2019 [10 favorites]
posted by chinesefood at 7:21 PM on March 26, 2019 [10 favorites]
Dril's great. Adam Sandler is great. Brand activations are also great.
posted by zymil at 7:59 PM on March 26, 2019
posted by zymil at 7:59 PM on March 26, 2019
dril could be a capital-w woman Weird genius if he wanted to. it's the capital-g part that requires training and special equipment
posted by delfin at 7:59 PM on March 26, 2019
posted by delfin at 7:59 PM on March 26, 2019
There supposed to be NO banality in 140k satire.
im confused.
posted by clavdivs at 8:53 PM on March 26, 2019
im confused.
posted by clavdivs at 8:53 PM on March 26, 2019
If dril leaves you confused, then job accomplished.
The tweets are literally there to make you do a double-take and to think about this, that, and the other for a second or two. That's his thing.
posted by hippybear at 9:12 PM on March 26, 2019 [1 favorite]
The tweets are literally there to make you do a double-take and to think about this, that, and the other for a second or two. That's his thing.
posted by hippybear at 9:12 PM on March 26, 2019 [1 favorite]
I would have sworn that the phrase "face God and walk backwards into Hell" existed long before the internet, but a quick Google search doesn't turn up anything; I'm at work and can't take the time to dig deeper. So now I'm just dissatisfied and unsettled.
I felt similarly when I read about "sweet summer child" (probably here as well).
posted by ODiV at 9:18 PM on March 26, 2019 [2 favorites]
I felt similarly when I read about "sweet summer child" (probably here as well).
posted by ODiV at 9:18 PM on March 26, 2019 [2 favorites]
Thought this "2020 Democratic Primary Candidates as @dril tweets" collection was quite strong.
posted by dreamlanding at 9:36 PM on March 26, 2019 [4 favorites]
posted by dreamlanding at 9:36 PM on March 26, 2019 [4 favorites]
I dunno, I think dril is kinda dumb. I do envy his obtuse dullard shtick, wish I'd thought of it.
posted by ovvl at 10:24 PM on March 26, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by ovvl at 10:24 PM on March 26, 2019 [1 favorite]
I have this half-baked theory that women aren't allowed to be capital-w Weird Geniuses in the way men are
sounds like you need to Party Harderson
posted by Philipschall at 1:46 AM on March 27, 2019 [2 favorites]
sounds like you need to Party Harderson
posted by Philipschall at 1:46 AM on March 27, 2019 [2 favorites]
@dril is actually one of my shortcuts for evaluating people.
if they like @dril, they're okay. if they don't like @dril, they're okay. if they don't care about @dril, they're okay. if they've never heard of @dril, they're okay.
posted by murphy slaw at 4:43 AM on March 27, 2019 [11 favorites]
if they like @dril, they're okay. if they don't like @dril, they're okay. if they don't care about @dril, they're okay. if they've never heard of @dril, they're okay.
posted by murphy slaw at 4:43 AM on March 27, 2019 [11 favorites]
I don't get the love for drill. He has an amusing or clever tweet about as often (and of about the same quality) as dozens of other tweeters who get retweeted into my timeline now and then. He seems to be following the Twitter zeitgeist more often than driving it.
Similarly here; his formula seems to be grumpy-old-man complaint with a surreal twist tacked on.
posted by acb at 6:37 AM on March 27, 2019
Similarly here; his formula seems to be grumpy-old-man complaint with a surreal twist tacked on.
posted by acb at 6:37 AM on March 27, 2019
And in a more serious vein, A Softer World? XKCD maybe?
Perry Bible Fellowship and Pokey The Penguin for the win.
posted by acb at 6:41 AM on March 27, 2019 [3 favorites]
Perry Bible Fellowship and Pokey The Penguin for the win.
posted by acb at 6:41 AM on March 27, 2019 [3 favorites]
and Pictures for Sad Children. Oh no pigeons.
posted by mmmbacon at 6:50 AM on March 27, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by mmmbacon at 6:50 AM on March 27, 2019 [2 favorites]
He broke character a little bit today when a Mitch McConnell-affiliated account tried to use the corncob meme to insult AOC. The choice of video he posted in reply is inspired.
posted by Space Coyote at 9:50 AM on March 27, 2019 [7 favorites]
posted by Space Coyote at 9:50 AM on March 27, 2019 [7 favorites]
In the sense that Elvis got famous doing stuff he stole from black people?
Nowhere near the top of the list of Twitter joke people I'd accuse of that. Not completely sure that you meant to, though - might have just been a dig at Elvis.
posted by atoxyl at 2:13 PM on March 27, 2019
Nowhere near the top of the list of Twitter joke people I'd accuse of that. Not completely sure that you meant to, though - might have just been a dig at Elvis.
posted by atoxyl at 2:13 PM on March 27, 2019
If dunking on @drill is wrong, then I don't want to be a jerk about it. Please tell him to stop crying I didn't really mean it.
posted by straight at 3:49 PM on March 27, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by straight at 3:49 PM on March 27, 2019 [2 favorites]
That's ok, as of right now @drill is an unclaimed account.
posted by idiopath at 5:19 PM on March 27, 2019
posted by idiopath at 5:19 PM on March 27, 2019
Straight, don't worry, he's got you covered there
posted by DoctorFedora at 5:24 PM on March 27, 2019
posted by DoctorFedora at 5:24 PM on March 27, 2019
I have this half-baked theory that women aren't allowed to be capital-w Weird Geniuses in the way men are, and dril is absolutely one of my current Exhibit A's on this.
"allowed"
that dumb article quoted patricia lockwood. PATRICIA LOCKWOOD. what are you talking about.
posted by queenofbithynia at 6:17 PM on March 27, 2019 [11 favorites]
"allowed"
that dumb article quoted patricia lockwood. PATRICIA LOCKWOOD. what are you talking about.
posted by queenofbithynia at 6:17 PM on March 27, 2019 [11 favorites]
If anyone can be said to be Poet Laureate of the Internet, it's dril.
Heh, as soon as I saw this I thought TRICIA LOCKWOOD, PEOPLE, COME ON, so I'm glad to see from queenofbithynia's comment I'm not the only one who thought of her.
posted by duffell at 6:42 AM on March 28, 2019 [6 favorites]
Heh, as soon as I saw this I thought TRICIA LOCKWOOD, PEOPLE, COME ON, so I'm glad to see from queenofbithynia's comment I'm not the only one who thought of her.
posted by duffell at 6:42 AM on March 28, 2019 [6 favorites]
so is Dril any good or not
posted by ominous_paws at 9:49 AM on March 28, 2019 [6 favorites]
posted by ominous_paws at 9:49 AM on March 28, 2019 [6 favorites]
I guess that depends on what your definition of Dril is.
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:35 AM on March 28, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:35 AM on March 28, 2019 [2 favorites]
And why does everybody call him dril instead of wint? Somebody please explain how do I make twits on this tweeter.
posted by straight at 11:45 AM on March 28, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by straight at 11:45 AM on March 28, 2019 [2 favorites]
so is Dril any good or not
theres actually zero difference
posted by cortex at 3:05 PM on March 28, 2019 [15 favorites]
theres actually zero difference
posted by cortex at 3:05 PM on March 28, 2019 [15 favorites]
Speaking of dril's influence on internet lingo, "Sorry. I'm sorry. I'm trying to remove it" is his as well.
posted by smokysunday at 1:32 PM on April 17, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by smokysunday at 1:32 PM on April 17, 2019 [2 favorites]
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the wise man bowed his head solemnly and spoke: "theres actually zero difference between good & bad things. you imbecile. you fucking moron"
5:52 PM - 1 Jun 2014
posted by dreamlanding at 10:43 AM on March 26, 2019 [37 favorites]