The Reply Guys

When you gain a certain level of prominence on the internet, you really learn about the diversity of human behavior. There’s your creeps, your good-faith operators, your pedants, your sycophants, your douchebags — you meet them all out there, usually all of them every single day. But there is one type of internet person who stands above all else in the world of parasocial interactions: The Reply Guy.

Reply Guys, to give a brief summation for those who are still sane, are the people who engage with or reply to a high-percentage of your posts. Do they get acknowledged? Rarely. Does that stop them? No.

The internet community is powered by Reply Guys, who have the acute ability to irritate you over a typo or jump down the throat of any loser who dares to attack or impugn their favorite poster. They are an essential part of the internet community ecosystem, the foundation on which a social media following is built.

They’re an interesting species, Reply Guys. They’re not necessarily trolls, and not necessarily fans, either. They exist in a secret third space: My replies.

Recently, I had a roundtable discussion with two of the internet’s premier Reply Guy engagers: Mina Kimes of ESPN and Spencer Hall of Channel 6.

We’re all deranged in our own special ways, but we’re bonded by the magic of parasociality. Mina, of course, is on television. Spencer, remarkably, has harnessed his influence in the college football world into frequent acts of philanthropy. I mostly debate the cultural influence of The Kinks with my mostly Gen X dad reply guys.

Here you go!