show transcript

[screenshot of a dril tweet posted to tumblr by maxknightley]
before this web site becomes 100% AI swamp water you can follow my ass on here
bsky.app/profile/dril.b…
or on here
instagram.com/dril_real/
Thank You.

maxknightley writes:
this is how you know Twitter is officially cooked

brawltogethernow replies:
This is like the opposite of a canary this is like Coal Lungs Pete finally coughing and keeling over.

    • Dril is one of the most influential meme accounts on twitter, “generally a recognizable type: a self-important buffoon who’s often raging out (show yourself, coward), or other times preening (buddy, they won’t even let me), over some bit of nonsense that we’re all meant to realize is absurdly unimportant.” Wikipedia

      The character (ostensibly not the actual person behind the account) is exactly the archetype of a user who would stay on current twitter.

      • @ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net
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        414 hours ago

        This is crazy. I’m pretty wired into a lot of internet, from the days of IRC to quietly lurking on 4chan/bottom feeding reddit. I’ve learned of subcultures on Tumblr and the darkness of Twitter. I am one of those guys that gives a polite nod when you send me a meme - I’ve probably already seen it.

        It’s crazy that I never heard of Dril, and reading the Wikipedia history makes me feel out of touch.

      • @Mr_Blott@feddit.uk
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        31 day ago

        Impact on Internet slang edit

        Like Dante or Shakespeare, Dril is a creator of vernacular: If you've ever tweeted about the boys being back in town,[dril 13] or bemoaned some group of people being at it again,[dril 14] or ruminated on things "they" won't even let you do,[dril 15] or asked for budgeting help because your family is dying,[dril 16] you're quoting Dril, maybe without even consciously realizing it by now ... [T]hrough sheer force of genius, his sense of humor has become everyone else's as well.
        

        Armin Rosen, Tablet[41]

        References to dril’s tweets have become part of the vernacular of Internet slang. Some of dril’s distinctive phrases have become so ubiquitous that they are used even by those who are unaware of the phrases’ origin.[2][41][42] Although dril’s biggest influence is on Twitter, his tweets are also popular on other social media platforms—for example, meme-aggregating groups on Facebook commonly share his content,[43] and several Tumblr users and trends have referenced and been influenced by dril.[44][45][46] There was a Know Your Meme guide to dril in 2014, at a time when KYM pages for individual Twitter users were comparatively rare.[8]

        A common piece of conventional wisdom on Twitter holds that it is possible to find a dril Tweet that corresponds to virtually any situation or statement,[9][47][48] leading to the saying “There’s always a dril Tweet.”[49][50][51] As an example, the dril Tweet below has been widely referenced after a person apologizes for making a dramatically offensive and obviously incorrect statement:[52]

        Avatar of wint
        	wint
        @dril
        	Twitter logo, a stylized blue bird
        
        issuing correction on a previous post of mine, regarding the terror group ISIL. you do not, under any circumstances, "gotta hand it to them"
        February 15, 2017[dril 17]
        

        As described by Purdom, finding the dril tweet that matches an event or statement has become an online parlor game, made possible because dril had “rendered a tightly written comedic exaggeration of every daily outrage and conflict from the news cycle in which we find ourselves trapped.”[9] Purdom also found that dril’s early preoccupations and sensibility had an outsized, “Velvet Underground-like influence on the tenor of the internet to come.”[9] By the end of 2017, the staff of Deadspin declared that “comparing everything to @dril” was a trend that “should die” in 2018, asserting that dril himself remained funny but dril comparisons had become an overused, lazy trope, because too many Twitter users were relying on dril references “as a substitute for an actual joke.”[48] Until 2021, dril’s first tweet, “no”, was used by dril as his “pinned tweet”, a feature of Twitter that allows one tweet the user considers to be particularly important to be “pinned” out of chronological order at the top of a Twitter feed. Despite, or because of, its lack of context, it has amassed thousands of likes and retweets. According to Will Oremus at Slate, the popularity of the “no” tweet is an example of how “The metadata is the message” on social media, as metrics like retweets provide important context and carry independent meaning, akin to a laugh track on TV.[53][54]

        I still have no idea about anything he’s said that has had any impact on internet slang

        Is his wiki written by a fan?

        • @tyler@programming.dev
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          114 hours ago

          It has to by because none of that originates from that account. I’ve literally never heard of this person and up until the Reddit exodus I was a chronically online person, spending like 17 hours a day online.

    • Mastodon still has the Star Trek dads, retired bloomscrolling posters, retrocomputing hobbyists, very earnest preachers/tubthumpers and those too autistic to have a concept of clout. As long as there’s a critical mass to sustain this self-contained rhizome of communities, it’ll quietly keep going.

    • @Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works
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      192 days ago

      Well, Twitter already lost most of the porn when they changed their terms of service so they could train AI on everything you post.