When the longest trial in Georgia’s history ended recently, its chief chronicler reflected on the past two years. Bliv, as he’s known on Discord, is a twenty-five-year-old Texas resident with a corporate job and a Young Thug obsession. “Like, him and Future are pretty much the only two artists I listened to in high school,” Bliv said the other day, over the phone. Bliv does not have a J.D. and, as far as he knows, has never met a lawyer in person. He’d never watched a legal proceeding, either—except bits of Johnny Depp v. Amber Heard—until Jeffery Lamar Williams, a.k.a. the rapper Young Thug, was indicted in May of 2022, along with twenty-seven co-defendants, for allegedly engaging in a criminal enterprise involving drugs, guns, and a murder. “I was, like, what?” Bliv recalled. He and a few dozen other people huddled on a Discord channel devoted to Thug to parse the legal arcana.
“We were trying to figure out the whole story the state was alleging,” Bliv went on. “What Thug’s chances were. Was he cooked? The media said he was on wiretaps ordering hits, stuff like that. Nobody on the Discord had ever read a whole indictment before.” They considered the accused. “We’re big fans, so we knew, like, eight names—but not all twenty-eight,” Bliv said. “Some seemed like randos.” Good analysis was hard to come by. “So I kinda stepped up,” he said. He found hearing calendars, pulled court documents, and, in late 2022, noticed a Zoom link left on one of them—a way in.
“It happened, like, three times,” Bliv said. “I screen-shared these private motions hearings on Zoom, so it wouldn’t show the, like, eighty people watching on our Discord.” He added, “I dunno if I broke any laws.” The defendants usually joined the Zooms from confinement, “labelled, like, Booth 5C,” Bliv continued. “I’d name myself Booth 6F or whatever and keep my camera off.” The Discord channel was riveted. Maybe others would be as well? Bliv took over a friend’s inactive Twitter meme account called ThuggerDaily. He posted pleadings, answered legal questions, speculated about suppressed phone calls, and noted names on witness lists (Lil Wayne, T.I.). He also watched the eventually live-streamed proceedings while “working” from home—or, more discreetly, in the office—and posted about the dramatics: a witness firing his lawyer from the stand; another witness admitting to being high while under oath; a defense attorney arrested on gang charges; a bungled drug exchange in the court room; and a nude man appearing during a hearing via Zoom alongside the message “FREE YOUNG THUG.”
Bliv sought to be entertaining and informative, but not exactly impartial. “The state claimed Thug had said he had put, like, a twenty-million bounty on somebody’s head,” Bliv recalled. “I knew that was a lie. He was talking about a different rapper”—Lil Uzi Vert—“having a twenty-four-million-dollar diamond surgically installed in his forehead.” Bliv relayed this insight to one of Williams’s managers early on. “Months later, it was in his lawyer’s opening statement,” Bliv said. He helped out other defendants, too. (One later posted on X, “Fun fact: @ThuggerDaily was my third lawyer!”) The account’s following surpassed a hundred thousand people, including the manager (“This is attention to detail on another level,” he D.M.’d), the court reporter, defendants, future witnesses (“They’re not supposed to follow the case,” Bliv said), Williams’s family, and many lawyers. “I assumed he was a lawyer,” one said. Another said, “His understandings of beefs and lyrics were incredibly useful in certain cross-exam situations,” adding, “I’m sixty. I don’t listen to rap music.”
Bliv’s identity was—and remains—a mystery. At one point, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter messaged him. “We’re trying to figure out who you are and who is your source cause sometimes you get stuff before us,” the reporter wrote. He appended three crying emojis. Bliv laughed: “I screenshotted that for the Discord and everyone there went crazy.”
Bliv even offered guidance, once, to the court videographer. “I said, ‘Pan over to Thug’s face the next time they play one of his songs as evidence,’ ” he said. The camera did so, catching Williams smiling. “Good content,” Bliv said. “And it went viral.” A recent Bliv post announcing that Williams received fifteen years’ probation “AND IS GOING HOME TODAY” got a hundred thousand likes. “I’m just glad he’s free,” Bliv said. The stardom of the anonymous stan-journalist raises a few questions, including: Will he go to law school now? “I think the bar exam would be fun to do,” Bliv said. He paused. “But I guess that’s not, like, a normal opinion.” ♦
