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>But one thing he was clear about from the beginning: It was all right to end this game of living in the digital shadows. > “I mean, my name is already out the
by OliveMate 3y ago
>But one thing he was clear about from the beginning: It was all right to end this game of living in the digital shadows.
> “I mean, my name is already out there,” he said, acknowledging the fact that, after the doxxing, he had at separate points confirmed his name on both Twitter and Reddit. “It’s in my Wikipedia article. Maybe people need to grow up. Just accept that I’m not like Santa Claus. I’m not a magic elf who posts.”
Even if he's not Santa or a magic elf, there's still good reason why stories of them are passed down.
I've known about his name for years, but it still feels odd and almost wrong about being able to put a name to dril and part of me doesn't really want to acknowledge it (even if it's literally at the top of the page). Of course there's a human behind dril, but it was never JoeyBob's dril.
On top of that, when gimmick/silly Twitter accounts get big they either sell out to scammers or the person behind it comes forward and uses the joke account as a personal one — so for dril to still be dril even with internet wide personality is a statement in of itself, especially when they keep doing what they're great at.
- OO000oo 3y ago> when gimmick/silly Twitter accounts get big they either sell out to scammers or the person behind it comes forward and uses the joke account as a personal one — so for dril to still be dril even with internet wide personality is a statement in of itself dril is not a "gimmick/silly Twitter account" though
- mvdtnz 3y agoHe absolutely is. How would you categorise his account?
- patmcc 3y agoHe's a shitposeter. Weird, maybe. Silly possibly, but that seems...lighter? Definitely not gimmicky. What's the gimmick?
- atchoo 3y agoShitposting is the gimmick i.e. "something that is not serious or of real value that is used to attract people's attention or interest temporarily".
- xzsinu 3y ago"Gimmick" implies that shitposting is deployed merely as a means to quick success, but dril's style of "shitposting" predates the term and is just what self-expression looked like on the old Internet.
- peppermint_gum 3y agoI think in this case "gimmick" was used in the pro-wrestling sense, it basically means "persona". >In professional wrestling, a gimmick generally refers to a wrestler's in-ring persona, character, behaviour, attire and/or other distinguishing traits while performing which are usually artificially created in order to draw fan interest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimmick_(professional_wrestling) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimmick_(professional_wrestlin...
- OO000oo 3y agoBut wrestling itself, or the act of performing a character, is not a gimmick under any definition of the term. If you want to adopt this definition from wrestling, which is a domain specific definition to be sure, then tell us what is the gimmick of dril the character? I think you are guilty of very lazy analysis and you don't know what you're talking about.
- BoiledCabbage 3y ago> Gimmick" implies that shitposting is deployed merely as a means to quick success, Can you explain this use of 'Gimmick'? I'm only familiar with the other/older/mainstream use of the term of essentially something 'extra' done to attract attention. Can you explain what you mean by 'quick success' w.r.t. 'gimmick'?
- 3y ago
- OO000oo 3y agoThen what is the gimmick? I would categorize it as performance.
- TillE 3y agoHe's essentially a Mitch Hedberg style comedian, just doing tweets instead of standup.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 3y agoThe weirdness of trying to put a name to dril to me is like trying to put a name on the voice of the people. It’s like if the hacker “Anonymous” was outed as primarily having been orchestrated by some hacker named Hayden Sommers (just a made up name that sounds real enough). dril is more of a cultural zeitgeist than a guy named Paul Dochney. Dochney is just the channel for how a good hunk of society feels about society and Twitter, and I feel like he also understands this intimately by reading how he talks in the interview. They do touch on this in the interview when talking about why SomethingAwful originally became popular (a kneejerk reaction against the breathless optimism of the Internet). Feels like a less cynical and more sarcastic cultural phenomenon than Black Mirror/twilight zone, but born of the same vein