you do not, under any circumstances, ‘gotta hand it to them’” “ i am selling six beautfiul, extremely ill, white horses. Many of his tweets have become part of the permanent online lexicon: “ ‘im not owned! im not owned!!’, i continue to insist as i slowly shrink and transform into a corn cob” “ issuing correction on a previous post of mine, regarding the terror group ISIL. Active since 2008, the Dril account-simultaneously known by the profile name “Wint”-with its grainy Jack Nicholson avatar, has been responsible for countless viral posts, just as beloved for the vivid scenes they induce as for the baffling grammatical and spelling errors they contain.

With 1.7 million highly engaged followers, Dril is one of the more powerful Twitter users and, by default, one of the more powerful figures on the internet. By Dril standards, this wasn’t even a particularly popular-or deranged-post. And its attracting all manner of stray dogs and coyotes to our towns.” The likes were ticking up and up in real time as they moved toward their eventual zenith of almost 17,000.

While I waited, I pulled up Dril’s Twitter account and looked at a recent post: “The fact is,” he wrote, “people arent doing a good job wiping their ass these days.

(As I sat, an older man in oversized overalls walked by carrying a seat cushion it was unclear whether he worked there.) This venue was the most readily available approximation of Dril’s world that I could think of. It was the quiet midafternoon hours at the diner, which is a relic of when the area was less upscale, and it still partially attracts an off-key clientele of misfits and bozos, some of whom are alone and in no hurry to leave. Sitting in the House of Pies in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, I was waiting for him to join me in a booth-but I didn’t know who was actually going to show up.

you fucking moron’” - Dril, Twitter, 2014ĭril is a real person, or so I had been told. “the wise man bowed his head solemnly and spoke: ‘theres actually zero difference between good & bad things. “Man is a double being and can take, now the god’s-eye view of things, now the brute’s eye view.” -Aldous Huxley, Ends and Means, 1937

First brute dead space