A Conversation with Will Stancil, The #1 Public Enemy of Twitter and Bluesky

I spoke to the infamous liberal poster who will never log off--even in the face of everyone yelling at him.

There are a few people I’ve really, really wanted to interview for this Substack, and this week I finally got to interview one: Will Stancil.

If you’re on Twitter or Bluesky, you’re probably like, “Oh yeah, of course Will fucking Stancil,” because this guy is pretty much always getting into it. I say that with love, as I am a devoted Stancil follower. But I don’t only follow him only for politics, even if I like most of his political takes. What I find most fascinating about him is how he continues to post despite being on the receiving end of some of the most rabid haters I’ve ever seen (I suppose it could always be worse—whatever you do, Will, please don’t post anything mean about Ariana Grande.)

For those of you who have never heard of him, he’s a Minnesota attorney who has spent most of his career on civil rights in schools and education, including a desegregation case and housing complaints against the state. He ran for office last year as a progressive. But, as he says, “The main reason anyone knows who I am or cares about me is because I also tweet... a lot.”

And tweet he does—to a chorus of angry commenters, mostly leftists and Republicans, not to mention the occasional white supremacist wacko. He recently earned the ire of Twitter’s white supremacists by saying that our government had been infiltrated by a small group of Nazis who were influencing the likes of Musk and Vance—but the hatred oscillated between “you’re hysterical, Will” and “Yes, it’s happening, and that’s good.” It’s at the point where it seems he’d have a better social media experience by deleting Twitter and Bluesky, and starting his own app a la Jeremy Renner. But if anyone could become the most controversial account on the Will Stancil app, it’s Will Stancil himself. He regularly gets haters in his mentions that might prompt someone less online to call 911 or the FBI.

But nevertheless, he persisted.

Will Stancil continues to post, with almost 100,000 followers on Twitter and over 60,000 on Bluesky (he also has a Substack, which you can find here.) And ultimately, while I question what drives Will to keep going in the face of constant screeching (and I did ask him this,) clearly a lot of people are along for the ride—whether they’re hate-following or love-following, he’s hardly shouting into the void.

And for a few days over DM, I had the honor of speaking with him directly—not just about the posting, but about who he is as a person, why he keeps going, and a surprisingly hopeful message about our political world.

(BTW, my 20% off annual subscription offer is only available until tomorrow- so now’s your…second to last chance.)