Noun: "(Internet, informal, derogatory) a male commenter who leaves frequent, unsolicited, and often inappropriate replies on a woman's social media posts"[edit]
2019, Sasha Beattie, "(S)he's A Female", Salient (Victoria University of Wellington), Volume 82, Issue 7 (2019), page 18:
Sure, I answer the hypothetical "so what do you want to do when you grow up?" with "Alaska Thunderfuck"–but I'm a drag queen, it's not my lane, and I wouldn't be swerving into it with the confidence of your local reply-guy on an Insta-hottie's thirst trap.
2019 September 16, Claire Lower, “When to Quote Tweet a Jerk”, in LifeHacker[1]:
Unless you’re doing it in a reply guy kind of way, supportive quote tweets are mostly welcome […].
2019, Tony Inglis, "Taking Stock", The Skinny, November 2019, page 39:
This Beta Band-esque trilogy of EPs, all entitled Men, populated by worried loners and real-life reply guys, doesn't so much contain Earth-shattering revelations – that people should be accepted for who they are, assuming their behaviour isn't problematic, deviant, or criminal – as it does absurdist musings on toxic male behaviour, questioning the ecosystem of dudes online telling other male-identifying individuals that their approach to masculinity is incorrect, and in turn, as he puts it, "examining myself and figuring out where I fit into this mess."
2020 February 5, Annie Lord, “Why Justin Bieber’s TikTok campaign for ‘Yummy’ is so embarrassing”, in The Independent[2]:
Since the release of his new song “Yummy”, Bieber has been needier on social media than that reply guy who keeps popping up in your DMs with “you up?” messages.
2020, Caitlin Hicks & Ngāti Ranginui, "Liquid Knowledge", Salient (Victoria University of Wellington), 1 June 2020, page 26:
She claims to have 'invented' long stylised Instagram captions, loves fairy emojis, turquoise, and caviar, and is dating one of her Twitter reply guys while she isolates in Sarasota, Florida.
2021, Julie DiCaro, Sidelined: Sports, Culture, and Being a Woman in America, page 67:
Leave it to a man to jump into my mentions–although not many of my reply guys can best me at wordplay, and Levi definitely did.
2021, Kaya Oakes, The Defiant Middle: How Women Claim Life's In-Betweens to Remake the World, pages 121-122:
These are just two examples of the kinds of silencing and erasure of women that formed the backbone of Christian patriarchy, but these ideas of submission and silence are still rolled out with some regularity today, not only by religious conservatives but by mansplainers, reply guys, and every other person who thinks they have more knowledge and more experience than a woman possibly could.
2021, Rayne Fisher-Quann, "Rachel Sennott Comes of Age in Shiva Baby", Next, April 2021, page 18:
She's built a cult following of Brooklynites, cool-girls and obsessive reply guys who all consider her the platonic ideal for Girls Who Are Both Funny and Hot.
2022, Haydn Aarons & Evan Willis, The Sociological Quest: An Introduction to the Study of Social Life, unnumbered page:
Another example of the stranger concerns patterns of social interaction on social media sites such as Twitter where the phenomenon of 'sliding into someone's DM's' (direct messages) or certain responses to posts from 'reply guys' have become an issue.
2022, Nina Jankowicz, How to Be a Woman Online: Surviving Abuse and Harassment, and How to Fight Back, page 45:
This is a wonderful feature for reply guys and other less aggressive individuals, as they will never know you've muted them but you will never have to see their content again, unless you choose to.
2022, Rachel Parris, Advice from Strangers: Everything I Know from People I Don't Know, unnumbered page:
I opened up a conversation on Twitter about teaching about the female orgasm and was inundated with replies, many from women who teach PSHE, studying doctorates in sex education or are professional sexperts, plus quite a few reply guys who waded in anyway.
2022, Beth Nakamura, quoted in Paul Martin Lester, Stephanie A. Martin, & Martin Smith-Rodden, Visual Ethics: A Guide for Photographers, Journalists, and Media Makers, unnumbered page:
I got trolled. As a female, we're the Twitter reply guys' punching bags. They don't like women in a position of agency.
Noun: "(Internet, informal, derogatory) any person who leaves such replies on someone's social media posts"[edit]
2019, Annabelle Williams, "Letter from the Editor", 34th Street Magazine, 16 October 2019, page 2:
I joke that my mother is my Twitter “reply guy.” Anytime I tweet, well, anything, I can expect a response in record time.
2020, Christian Sayers, "Here's some helpful, or not, ways to stay busy during quarantine", Indiana Daily Student (Indiana University), 6 April 2020, page 6:
You can be a reply guy to anyone you want: the president, Alex Rodriguez, the Indiana Daily Student, Dolly Parton.
2021, Jules Boykoff, NOlympians: Inside the Fight Against Capitalist Mega-Sports in Los Angeles, Tokyo and Beyond, unnumbered page:
They use Google alerts to stay on top of Olympic-related topics, monitoring key phrases. They are known to clap back at politicians, Olympic honchos, and journalists whose work they wish to critique (or occassionally high-five). They'll also do “reply-guy” interventions, sliding into people's feeds to drum up conversation.
2021, Ben Detrick & Andrew Kuo, The Joy of Basketball: An Encyclopedia of the Modern Game, unnumbered page:
The accounts had few followers and primarily acted as reply guys to Philadelphia beat reporters and bloggers. Had they stuck to insulting Sam Hinkie, the team's former general manager and a martyred hero, it might have resulted only in an embarrassing snafu.
2021, Nicole Saphier, Panic Attack: Playing Politics with Science in the Fight Against COVID-19, unnumbered page:
The problem is, most experts do not spend time preparing to see their work abused by Twitter reply guys or their big-city mayor.
2021, Tony Woodlief, I, Citizen: A Blueprint for Reclaiming American Self-Governance, unnumbered page:
What's true across human history is that when the rewards for an activity increase, people will do more of it. Thus did Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, and the rest of them spawn legions of shit-posters, trolls, meme spreaders, and reply guys.
2021, Faris Yakob, Paid Attention: Innovative Advertising for a Digital World, page 144:
Digital marketing is not simply a place to disperse symbols but rather the emergence of a new behavioural grammar for companies, as they begin to engage with their customers in new ways in new spaces, where everyone has a voice, even if those voices seem drowned out by bots, trolls and reply guys much of the time.
2022, Monica Elkinton, "Convention speaker advocates larger Supreme Court", The Alaska Bar Rag, December 2022, page 14:
There is no deeper hive of scum and villainy than Twitter. But if you're already on there, worry about your own feed. Worry about being accurate and truthful. Don't be a reply guy. Just do your own feed. Ted Cruz doesn't need to know you hate him. He knows.
2022, Caleb Gardner, No Point B: Rules for Leading Change in the New Hyper-Connected, Radically Conscious Economy, unnumbered page:
Over the course of a year, they used a massive volunteer army to respond to specific political misinformation with notes suggesting that story had been debunked and links to articles to read more, becoming the embodiment of the online reply guy. More than a thousand people received their responses, and the researchers found that instead of correcting their behavior, the spreaders of misinformation actually doubled down on their behaviour, becomming more stubborn than they were before.