William Stancil (born July 16, 1985) [1] is an American lawyer and researcher on housing policy who was a candidate for the Minnesota House of Representatives in 2024 in District 61A. He is notable for his presence on X and Bluesky, and has been called the "most harassed guy on X" by Slate [2] and the Minneapolis–Saint Paul region's "most prolific public intellectual on social media." [3]
Stancil grew up in Belmont, North Carolina [4] and received a bachelor's degree from Wake Forest University, a master's degree in modern history from Queens University Belfast, and a juris doctor and master's degree in public policy from the University of Minnesota. [5] As of 2024, he was a research fellow at the University of Minnesota's Institute of Metropolitan Opportunity, with a focus on civil rights and education and housing policy, working for Myron Orfield, who later endorsed his House campaign. [5]
For his House of Representatives campaign, Stancil supported more government accountability, revitalizing Minneapolis economically, better public education, enhancing public safety, restoring the tax base, and protecting civil rights. [6] [7]
Stancil has been described as one of the "most well-known online pugilists in American politics" by the editor in chief of the Minnesota Reformer. [8] In 2024, Stancil argued that the economy under the presidency of Joe Biden was successful despite high inflation, and that the negative polarization against Biden was largely as a result of social media. [9] Stancil believes that voters' perception of the world colored through social media is significantly more important than their material wellbeing, and that psychology was the primary reason Kamala Harris lost the 2024 election and Trumpism is successful. [10]
During his run for Minnesota House of Representatives, Internet trolls alleging they were fans of Stancil harassed his opponents, causing them to increase security at public events and limit their use on the X (formerly Twitter) platform. [11] Trolls also used Grok to tweet fantasies of Stancil being sexually assaulted, for which Stancil threatened filing a lawsuit against Elon Musk, the owner of Grok and X. [12] In 2025, neo-Nazi activist Emily Youcis created The Will Stancil Show, an AI-assisted satirical cartoon that parodies Stancil's "wokeness" [13] and his liberal beliefs, depicting him fighting villains with his graduate degrees and Black sidekick. Charles Cornish-Dale, writing for The Spectator , described the series as "better than anything Comedy Central or Adult Swim has produced in the last 20 years." [14] The Atlantic described The Will Stancil Show as the "racist, AI-generated future of entertainment." [15]
In October, a woman with 43,000 followers debuted an A.I.-slop cartoon called "The Will Stancil Show," depicting a fictional Stancil as a parody of wokeness who hands out free housing vouchers to groups of Black kids.