Ken M

About

Ken M is the online identity of Kenneth McCarthy, who is known for his humorous comment trolling on sites like Yahoo News and the Huffington Post. Screenshots of his comments are posted on a variety of forums, including a dedicated subreddit, and admired for their satire of comment-board culture and characters.

Background

According to an interview with Reddit's Upvoted blog, Ken M is Kenneth McCarthy, a copywriter for Comedy Central.^[1] He used to leave sincere comments on news articles and in other forums, "but hardly anyone responded rationally to what he had to say. “I was appalled by the Yahoo comment section. It was such a toxic, shitty space,” he explained." In April of 2011, he began leaving satirical comments on posts in the newsfeed of Yahoo News.^[2]

Online Presence

Ken M began by keeping a record of his comments on Tumblr as user HorseySurprise,^[3] and then created a Twitter account with the same handle for the character as well.^[4] The Ken M character generally uses photographs of elderly men as avatars, although Ken himself is in his mid-30s. In 2012, Ken M began writing a column entitled "The Troll"^[5] for CollegeHumor and in 2013 he started another column for the comedy site The Runt.^[6] Both columns featured collections of screenshots of Ken M comments.

On May 13th, 2013, the /r/kenm subreddit was founded, and as of October 2015 it has more than 61,500 subscribers.^[7] In addition, the official Ken M Facebook page, which Ken often uses to comment on corporate social media profiles, has more than 20,000 likes.^[8] Articles about the work of Ken M have appeared on Uproxx^[9] and Gizmodo.^[10]

Search Interest

External References