Obviously, Dril gave the best interview about Elon Musk’s Twitter
One of the all-time great Twitter posters has some very funny thoughts about one of the all-time worst
Aux News Elon Musk
As Twitter continues its uncomfortable writhing under the yoke of newly-installed owner Elon Musk, The Washington Post’s Taylor Lorenz has secured what might be the ultimate in commentary on Musk’s nascent leadership of the site: An interview with Twitter user Dril, the online comedian once memorably dubbed “the patron saint of the internet” by former A.V. Club editor Clayton Purdom.
As many people have noted, Dril is sort of the prototypical form of the kind of online poster Musk seems desperate to be—funny, unpredictable, and deeply unconcerned with seeming cool, which is, of course, extremely cool. (Not for nothing that Musk once posted a meme that was a classic Dril joke with all identifying markers shaved off.) This week alone, you can find obvious evidence in the gulf in their posting abilities in abundance: As Musk “trolled” a disinterested Stephen King with all the flair of a seventh-grader playing “I’m not touching you,” Dril simply roasted Musk alive in the interview. “Elon seems like one of the classic comedic showmen,” he told Lorenz at one point during the interview. “Everything he does is a comedic bit. He’s always trying to get a laugh, that’s why he makes all his cars suicidal.”
Continuing the theme, Dril took aim at Musk’s pledge to begin reducing the algorithmic focus that “negative” tweets will receive, drawing accusations that he’ll be instituting so-called shadowbanning practices. “My freedom of speech has been eradicated,” Dril asserted. “Say a Tesla ran into my son and killed him. Maybe I think that it’s fine, it’s not negative that a Tesla ran into my son and killed him. That’s fine, because it’s a work in progress.”
The whole interview is like that—the kind of high-wire act of irony, self-deprecation, and just sheer weirdness that epitomizes a very specific breed of online comedy. (At one point, Dril states that he’ll never pay for a blue check mark, but that, if Musk offered him a job, “I think it would be my duty to answer the call. I would absolutely do it. I would be his dog, I would follow his every order like a disgusting dog. I would beg for his mercy and I would learn to code if it pleased him.”) Sentence-by-sentence, it’s one of the best interviews we’ve read all year—and a firm reminder of the very odd, very valuable world that’s now endangered by Musk’s handling of the service.
55 Comments
I still miss “Truthpoint,” Dril’s show on Adult Swim. Looks like it’s been scrubbed from their website but all the episodes are still up on YouTube.
that’s so fucked up, I always forget to check YouTube when something is literally unavailable anywhere else (there are still many movies that are basically out of print because they’re not on streaming, or Netflix doesn’t carry them as DVDs which nobody uses anyway). At one point I think John Hillcoat’s Ghosts…of the Civil Dead was not available anywhere…but it was on YouTube. Todd Haynes’ Superstar also and Dottie Got Spanked.
i had never heard of this movie and the wiki makes me want to watch it, but i am not finding a full movie on YT?
I just tried searching “Ghosts of the Civil Dead full movie” on Google, and it was the fourth search result in the video tab.
oddly enough i never included “full movie”, thank you. Found it.
The article recommended to me at the bottom of the page when I read this was “This is your brain on a migraine”. Then it scrolled to the one about the US Navy having to pay for software piracy. Trying to tell us something?
The comments on that Wash Post article are almost as surreal as a Dril tweet itself.Clueless, angry boomers who are mad at other people for an article they chose to read.
They really don’t like this guy getting more respect than Tim Berners-Lee.
“If he’s so funny, how come he doesn’t have a sitcom on CBS?”
he’ll have to gain at least 100 lbs before they pair him with Courtney Thorne Smith
I was gonna say, be sure to read the comments. I’m a Washington Post subscriber and I read the article last week, and the comments were just the perfect finishing touch.
Clayton PurdomNot long enough though.
Just to be clear, the article isn’t talking about this guy?
That’s Daryl
You mean Daril!
You pronounced his name wrong.
Lopez?
Brains from Thunderbirds?
I always feel weird when I see something about dril coming up in a “legitimate” news source. It’s like when an indie band you like goes mainstream. Like “no the best poster on the site is supposed to be my secret”. Which I realize is a douchey attitude but still…
I don’t want to have to tell you how weird and dated this is.
There seems to be a running a theme in the last 5 years of right wing men looking for that white hero to champion their masculinity cause. From Trump, to Elon Musk. Who can be the best troll to make the woke liberal’s angry? I can then post that lady screaming with the beanie hat and laugh at liberals. Say no to diversity, gay people and women who question men. Revenge of the white man!
I really don’t “get” most of dril’s stuff, to be honest, but that interview made me laugh out loud a couple of times.
Even if Dril himself is on other platforms and had his Adult Swim show, Twitter is the platform where his humor works best.
I enjoyed his book but yeah it doesn’t have the same impact when it’s not in tiny, bite-size chunks. His instagram stories are pretty good, though
One is as unfunny and desperate a cry for attention as the other. Both are to be ignored. Neither is worthy of my personal time. This article was barely worth this comment. Now I feel ripped off.
This reads like a dril tweet, congrats
There is nothing wrong with Twitter, contrary to what I’ve read in the insane ridiculous media. Been using Twitter since 2008, and it is literally no better or worse now than it was at any point in its existence. The left, and its mouth pieces, are just pissed moderates and centrists no longer support their wacky agenda and ideals. Musk just blew up one of the liberal echo chambers, and now media outlets, like this one, scream about how Twitter is going to die. Yaaaaaawn, go use Reddit ya weirdos.
About seven-eighths of his workforce is gone in a month, including people he definitely needs but didn’t ask why they were there.
The human rights team, for instance, were the specialists in handling the regular requests from governments to delete tweets, unmask accounts and so on. Without them, you can count on people advocating for human rights and democracy in repressive regimes are going to die and soon.
A huge proportion of his advertisers have “suspended” their ad campaigns, since the checkmark fiasco has meant companies have lost stock value due to impersonators. Musk’s own email to staff referenced this, and said there was a high risk of the company going bankrupt as a result. (To say nothing of the $1 billion in interest payments he has to make annually to pay off the loans he took out to buy the company.)
There’s been a measured and documented (not just anecdotal) jump in the amount of harassment and hate speech, which is driving advertisers even further away.
Tesla stock is down by more than 50% since he took over Twitter.
He’s one really bad service outage from having the Fail Whale come back for days or weeks.
At that point, who will he be able to hire to back-fill all the openings he’s created? It’s declining in value, so even if it was still public, stock isn’t a reason to sign on any more. Instead of trying to figure out how the company runs, Musk roamed Twitter HQ this weekend, finding stuff to mock about the staff to tweet out to his followers.
He’s either going to accidentally kill it or sell it for a greatly reduced price within the year, probably much sooner.
Tesla stock is down by more than 50% since he took over Twitter. I agree with your overall points, but Tesla is only down about %20 (which still isn’t great) since he took over.
I think my favourite story is the one where Musk fired someone and then had to call them a few hours later because he’d locked himself and remaining staff out of the Twitter offices and needed this guy to restore security access.
It’s cruising right now but you need workers to run the site. And yeah, he “blew up a liberal echo chamber” but he had to torch the site and billions of dollars to do it. Proof that if you give someone enough unaccountable power, their ego will result in them sitting on their own balls. The only thing more embarrassing than Musk’s flailing is the weirdos who go to bat for this guy. Quit idolizing people, especially those who show nothing but contempt for you.
Has he blown up a liberal echo chamber? My main impression is that nothing of significance has really changed at all.
except the mass banning of left wing activists while reinstating nazis and white nationalists
Musk is going to spend the next several months going, “Oh, that’s why they did that.” Twitter isn’t and wasn’t a “liberal echo chamber,” it was an online platform run by business people who were trying to make sure as many people as possible were comfortable on their platform. They weren’t suspending anti-trans bigots because they didn’t like their opinions, they were suspending anti-trans bigots because they were harassing other users and campaigning to get other people to hurt them in real life, and advertisers didn’t want their brands and products to be showing up next to those tweets.Musk can’t figure that out because he’s always been anti-advertising, because he’s never ran a company that required it, but can’t wrap his head around that
“May I offer you a light?” – slak
Well, yesterday all the unbanned right wingers went on a mass reporting spree of any one left wing, “woke”, or simply trans. So a bunch of those people are now banned, so you know, “free speech”
Sounds like they are finally taking action against disinformation
Twitter isn’t even a liberal echo chamber, it’s an every-kind-of-idea echo chamber, depending on how you use it. It’s just as much a right echo chamber as a leftist one.
There’s quantifiable evidence you’re wrong.https://sites.tufts.edu/digitalplanet/heres-proof-hate-speech-is-more-viral-on-elon-musks-twitter/
This person isn’t going to pay any mind to something as silly as ‘evidence.’
How does that prove they’re wrong? They said he “blew up the liberal echo chamber,” code for “made the site safe for hate speech.”
Have some dignity
its obviously worse now its all horrible buisness accounts talking about “wokeness” getting promoted off bots. Bots are worse than ever lmao
If it’s a “liberal echo chamber” why do conservatives want to use it so badly
>the left>liberalMake up your mind
Spot the Elon dork
I think I’m ready to say that I really don’t get the appeal of Dril. I’ve read a bunch of his tweets and I think I see what he’s going for, but it just doesn’t do it for me. Still, godspeed to anyone mocking Musk.
I think his ramblings were much more profound in the early days of Twitter, when it didn’t quite know what it was yet and every other yokel on Twitter wasn’t trying to be funny.I revisit Dril’s Twitter page every few years and occasionally find a gem or two but for the most part, it’s just such a jaded platform that his inane rants go mostly unheard among millions of screaming babies on Twitter today.He’s still legend but definitely a product of its time.
Idk maybe I just didn’t get it but I don’t see what was so great about the interview.
Sounds like you arent staying woke. The morons that find Chappelle not funny think some dickhead of Twitta is hilarious
I don’t get people who don’t get Dril
Elon Musk is now MAGA and that comes with a lot of baggage you don’t want. I mean as much as I hate Ron DeSantis. He’d be the smart play right now for the GOP, but instead they’re still pushing Trump. The majority of America now he sees him aligned with white supremacy, treason, responsible for covid deaths, QA’non wackos and in general criminal activity. There’s no escaping it. He’s forever linked with all these things and It’s not like Trump ever won the popular vote either or that there was a red wave. Every candidate Trump picked lost in the Mid-Terms. Trump will lose again, but even worse if ends up being the GOP pick to run for President. How many times will the GOP/MAGA have to learn a lesson?
“once memorably dubbed “the patron saint of the internet” by former ”Who? You morons do know that normal people havent heard of your dumbass editors right?
God, no surprise that the morons that find Chappelle not funny think some dickhead of Twitta is hilarious