"Dril Replaced" Theory

Submission 11,277

Part of a series on Dril. [View Related Entries]

About

"Dril Replaced" Theory refers to a conspiracy theory that at some point, the original person who ran the Dril Twitter / X account either sold or gave the account to somebody else, and that the person currently with the account is attempting to use Dril's voice and style but lacks the genius of the original Dril. Advocates for this theory cite Dril's penchant in the mid-2020s for tweeting about current events and using improved grammar, while others have called the theory nonsense.

Origin

The idea that Dril sold his account and that someone different was posting under the name has persisted since 2014. One of the earliest known mentions of this theory was posted on September 7th, 2014, by Twitter user @MeadowAtLast^[1] (shown below). The tweet, however, did not receive significant engagement.

Spread

The theory saw occasional spikes in prominence throughout the remainder of the 2010s, usually coinciding with tweets in which Dril mentioned current events.

In the early 2020s, more posts pushing the theory began spreading as Dril notably feuded with Elon Musk over having a Verified checkmark. On February 16th, 2023, a tweet by user @seungylee14^[2] saying Dril had sold the account and "gone woke" was screenshotted by Twitter user @halomancer1,^[3] gaining over 1,500 retweets and 23,000 likes in 18 months (shown below).

On July 5th, 2024, Twitter user @confusionm8trix^[4] posted a tweet saying they believed the theory, gaining over 960 retweets and 25,000 likes in six weeks (shown below).

This sparked more discourse than other times the theory spread over the previous decade.

On July 24th, NBC reporter Kat Tenbarge (@KatTenbarge)^[5] posted on her Twitter that she believed the theory (shown below, top). Dril^[6] quote-tweeted it saying, "maybe someone should look into this and figure it out? a fucking Award Winning Reporter, maybe?" gaining over 460 retweets and 10,000 likes in one month (shown below, bottom).

On August 5th, 2024, Medium writer pidgezero_one^[7] published an analysis of the conspiracy theory, suggesting that people were reaching for conspiracies when the idea they didn't connect as much with Dril posts as they used to was easily explained by other factors, such as their own aging.