In Defense of Twitter’s ‘Reply Guy’
Online harassers have poisoned Twitter, but we can still find space for normal conversation, right?
Hello. My name is Andrew, and I’m a Reply Guy.
Twitter is my life’s one major addiction. The same way gambling addicts feed quarters into a slot machine hoping for a jackpot, I refresh my timeline for breaking news, calls for pitches, snarky jokes, and other miscellaneous inanities more often than I care to admit. (There’s actually plenty of research into this comparison if you’re looking to pity me even more.)
Until recently, a browser tab was almost always open to my timeline while I worked my dead-end day job, and my phone still makes the app all too available for distractions throughout the day. It adds up to an embarrassingly large amount of time that I could otherwise spend, you know, productively. Perhaps, dare I say, even happily. But, of course, I don’t. I just keep tweeting into the void along with everyone else.
I also still reply to people. A lot. Mostly to people I know who follow me back, but often to larger names and personalities I’ve never met but one-way follow, thus technically (and horrifically) fulfilling the requirements of the much-maligned Reply Guy.
