A profile of Paul Dochney, the man behind pseudonymous character @dril that emerged from Something Awful to become one of the most influential Twitter accounts
Paul Dochney posted his way into the halls of internet lore. After 15 years of anonymity, can he emerge without compromising his act? Tweets: @kriswernowsky , @scottnover , @en_cohen , @whet , @joeyneverjoe , @lara_korte , @nate_rgrs , @nicktagliaferro , @getfiscal , @drewmagary , @ted_scheinman , and @gracegfreud Tweets: Kris Wernowsky / @kriswernowsky : Another really great bit of writing. It ends upbeat, but there's something kinda sad about how social media often feels like an obligation with very little upside for a lot of people who are really good at it. https://twitter.com/... Scott Nover / @scottnover : Great interview. At this point you could show me a 2-hour documentary of this guy—I could know everything about him—and yet I'd still be able to see dril as a totally separate Thing. The dril doxxing was like a stone thrown in a pond with no ripples. https://twitter.com/... Ian Cohen / @en_cohen : “Dril (In the House of Pies)” I watched you chaaaaaaaaange Into a Pauuuuuul https://twitter.com/... Whet Moser / @whet : when he talks about ignatius j. reilly being the first internet guy, he gets it on a deep level https://twitter.com/... Joey Scott / @joeyneverjoe : “Posting is not something you want to do forever,” he said. https://www.theringer.com/... Lara Korte / @lara_korte : This is delightful and MASTERFULLY written. “He is the dark, democratic promise of the internet—that anyone can use it to broadcast their opinions at any time—fulfilled.” https://www.theringer.com/... Nate Rogers / @nate_rgrs : I invited Dril to the House of Pies and, much to my delight, Paul showed up instead. Behind the character is a real person, who's looking to make a living as an artist (or whatever you want to call it). And he's OK with people knowing all about it: https://www.theringer.com/... @nicktagliaferro : dril is from New Jersey...no state can beat us at churning out deranged wisecracking little guys... https://twitter.com/... Don Hughes / @getfiscal : Instead of reporting on Internet posters maybe write an article about one of poor countries... https://twitter.com/... Drew Magary / @drewmagary : Tommy Craggs once told me that he considered dril to be the internal monologue of the internet, and I still think that's pretty accurate. https://www.theringer.com/... Ted Scheinman / @ted_scheinman : “'I ask that you PLEASE look BEYOND his Crude Visage before you lay Judgement upon this Man. AND read some of his Posts.'” https://twitter.com/... Grace Freud / @gracegfreud : Paul is a great, sweet, very funny guy who just so happens to also have created the best account on this website. https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
The profile joins a small genre of reporting that pulls back the curtain on people whose influence lives entirely through a handle: The Ringer's piece follows prior coverage of figures like Chris Gilliard, who built a public intellectual career under the @hypervisible name and Palmer Luckey, whose trolling became inseparable from his business biography. What distinguishes this one is that the value being risked is purely comedic — a persona with no product attached.
@dril's arc runs from Something Awful forums to one of Twitter's most influential accounts over 15 anonymous years, a span that overlaps the platform's shift from joke culture to the troll economy documented in recent coverage, where experts note performers have had to escalate as the audience of normal users shrinks.
First-order effects
- Paul Dochney trades 15 years of accumulated mystique for a byline: every future @dril post is now read against a named, profiled person, which tests whether the character's absurdist voice survives attribution.
Second-order effects
- Other long-running pseudonymous accounts become more valuable as unexposed assets — and more attractive targets for outlets chasing the same reveal formula that worked here.
- The profile validates a media lane where identifying anonymous posters is the story itself, raising the price of staying dark for anyone whose handle has enough cultural weight to justify the reporting effort.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, pseudonymity functions less like privacy and more like an option that eventually gets cashed out through a profile, a book, or a brand deal — meaning the internet's most durable characters are structurally on borrowed time from the moment they get big.
The trend: Pseudonymous internet fame is converging with the profile-industrial complex, where sustained anonymity is increasingly treated as a story waiting to be told rather than a permanent condition.