Reply Guy

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Part of a series on Internet Slang. [View Related Entries]

About

Reply Guy is a derogatory internet slang term for men who reply to many tweets from women with an over-familiarity and unwarranted flirtatiousness. The "reply guy" can also be an angry responder to a woman's tweets who believes their tweets are entitled to a response.

Origin

Initially, "reply guy" was most often used as a derogatory term for people who often appeared in replies to famous figures, particularly Donald Trump. It began growing popular on Weird Twitter and left Twitter, spreading in tweets from users including @boring_as_heck^[1] and @ByYourLogic (shown below).

Spread

Over the course of the year, the term began seeing use among women as a term to make fun of men who attempted to flirt with them or proffer opinions in replies to their tweets. On July 17th, 2018, Daily Beast reporter Kelly Weill tweeted, "if you're a reply guy sending a bunch of women your bad, unsolicited opinions, there's at least one message group mercilessly mocking you, so take comfort or whatever you get out of that" (shown below, left). On September 3rd, Twitter user @sbarolo released a chart organizing the types of Reply Guys into nine different categories, grouped by "means well," "focused on 'real problems,'" and "malicious," gaining over 4,000 retweets (shown below, right).

That same year, the use of "Reply Guy" to mean male Twitter trolls spread in media stories. Raw Story^[2] wrote an explainer of the Reply Guy, using examples of replies to women like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (shown below). They also interviewed women in media about their "reply guys." Reporter Amanda Marcotte wrote:

"(Before Twitter, Reply Guys) would email you, demanding that you correspond to them. Sometimes they would insist on a ‘debate’ and other times it was just that they wanted to chat at length. Either way, it was rooted in this sense that they were entitled to ask for extensive amounts of attention and emotional labor from a complete stranger.”

On November 15th, McSweeney's wrote a parody "Reply Guy's Constitution" mocking the group.^[3] On December 20th, Urban Dictionary user Esther Lolstein provided a definition of the term^[4] (shown below).

"Charge Your Phone" Guys

Women online have also discussed a strand of "Reply Guys" who comment on phone screenshots by telling them they need to charge their phone. These people are generally stereotyped as boring and the comment unwelcome. For example, Twitter user and comedian Amy Miller^[5] tweeted "Imagine being the person that comments “charge your phone” on a funny screenshot. Full savings account, never cums" (shown below, left). User @MarisaKabas^[6] tweeted "if your response to a tweet of a screenshot is "charge your phone!!!" you're a cop" (shown below, right).

The phenomenon was covered Mel Magazine,^[7] who wrote:

“Charge your phone” is the ne plus ultra of the genre, keenly pathetic and low-effort even as it aspires to a teasing, high-status cleverness. No one who tries it deserves the time of day; they must be shunned until they come up with a new line, or, better yet, an actual personality.