reply guy

Reply guys didn’t always have such a bad rap.

Many brands, such as Wendy’s and Netflix, personify their brands in their social media accounts. One early adopter was the restaurant chain Applebee’s in 2012. Their Facebook social media manager would notably reply to comments on the site, earning the nickname Applebee’s Reply Guy thanks to their humorous and endearing replies.

But as early as 2015, reply guy became associated with someone who replies immediately and obnoxiously to posts on Twitter, especially in reply to famous people. As if they have nothing better to do but wait around to weigh in on a topic with their two cents.

I tried to be the douchey first reply guy to the new Texas governor but someone beat me to it with a "please ban sharia law" tweet

— Arturo Beverage (@saltythetrain) January 16, 2015

By 2018, the gendered nature of reply guys was on full display, particularly their tendency to mansplain or presumptuously flirt. In September of that year, scientists @shrewshrew and @sbarolo offered a hilarious taxonomy of nine different kinds of reply guys “who repeat the same unhelpful comments.”

#WomeninSTEM get a lot of “Reply Guys” who repeat the same unhelpful comments.@shrewshrew and I (a woman & a man in science) have attempted to catalog those replies, to save us all the trouble of writing new responses every time.

presenting THE NINE TYPES OF REPLY GUYS

(1/n) pic.twitter.com/0ewNRJloLu

— Scott Barolo (@sbarolo) September 3, 2018

In November 2018, author Emlyn Crenshaw wrote a parodical piece for McSweeney’s titled “Reply Guy Constitution,” an excerpt of which humorously summarizes the reply guy mentality:

For the good of the Internet and the preservation of Male Excellence, We shall weigh in on women’s thoughts at every possible opportunity. Never shall We leave a comedian’s jokes un-improved or a female’s observations un-corrected. Eternally shall We pipe in.