The Thing Nobody Talks About

I spent three years impersonating other people on the internet.

Not as a con artist. Not as a catfish. But as a professional comment-reply person for mid-tier creators.

I would respond to comments from their accounts. I would slide into DMs and write replies that felt like them. I would build parasocial relationships on behalf of people I'd never met.

And I want to talk about what it does to your brain.

How I Got Here

It started innocuously. A creator I knew had blowup success. Suddenly, they were getting 500 comments per day instead of 50. They couldn't keep up.

"Can you help manage comments?" they asked.

I said yes. And I became a character.

The creator—let's call them Alex—had a specific voice. Self-deprecating humor. Thoughtful about their work. Responsive to genuine questions. Dismissive of drama.

I learned the voice. I practiced it. And I started replying to comments as Alex.

"This video was exactly what I needed today, thank you!" → Alex replies: "Honestly, I needed to make this for myself too. Glad it landed."

"Your technique in [part] is amazing" → "Thanks! That part took forever to get right, honestly still not 100% happy with it."

"Do you respond to all comments?" → "I try to catch the thoughtful ones, this one's genuine so yes 😌"

It worked. People felt seen. Comments became more thoughtful. The community around Alex strengthened.

And I became a ghost in their machine.

The Weird Psychology of Being Someone Else

Here's what's strange: when you're responding as someone else for long enough, you stop thinking of it as impersonation. You start thinking of it as representation.

"I'm representing Alex's voice," I told myself. Not "I'm pretending to be Alex."

The distinction matters psychologically, but it's also a lie.

I was actually pretending to be Alex. And the people I was talking to thought they were talking to Alex. They weren't. They were talking to me, using Alex's voice.

The first month, I felt that weirdness. The second month, it felt normal. By month six, I was committed to the deception in a way that scared me a little.

The DM Thing (This Is Where It Got Dark)

Comments were one thing. But then Alex asked me to handle DMs too.

This is where you're not managing a public relationship anymore. You're managing an intimate relationship on someone else's behalf.

People would DM with personal things:

• "I'm dealing with [mental health issue], your content helped me"
• "I love your work, you inspire me every day"
• "I have a problem and I think you'd understand"

And I would respond. As Alex. With Alex's warmth and perceived care.

Some of these people clearly had parasocial relationships with Alex. They felt like they knew Alex. And when I replied to their DMs, they felt even more connected.

I was deepening a relationship that was one-sided. That was fictional. That was based on someone being available in intimate capacity when they absolutely were not.

The Moment I Realized It Was Fucked

A person DMed Alex: "I'm having suicidal ideation and your work is one of the few things keeping me going. I just wanted to say thank you."

I wrote back, as Alex, something warm and supportive. I encouraged them to seek help. I made it clear that Alex cares.

And then I realized: that person now thinks Alex cares about them specifically. They think they have a relationship with Alex. And they might be relying on that relationship as part of their mental health strategy.

If Alex suddenly disappeared (quit creating, deleted the account, whatever), this person would feel abandoned by someone they'd formed an emotional bond with.

And that person wouldn't actually be abandoned by Alex. They'd been abandoned by me, a stranger who temporarily played a character.

That's when I understood: I wasn't helping anyone. I was building dependency on a false relationship.

What Happened to the Creators

I worked for three different creators over about five years. Here's the pattern:

Creator 1 (Alex): Alex hired me to manage comments and DMs. After a year, Alex felt disconnected from their audience. "I don't actually know what people think anymore," Alex said. "You're my filter."

Alex felt like their relationship with their community was mediated. And it was. By me. And that sucked for Alex.

Eventually, Alex took back comment management and realized how much work it was. Alex had to either reduce content output or accept being less responsive.

This is the actual trade-off. You either respond to your audience or you scale. You can't do both.

Creator 2 (Jordan): Jordan asked me to handle comments and DMs because they wanted to be "more available for their community."

What actually happened: Jordan got more distant. Jordan stopped reading comments at all. Jordan lost touch with what their audience actually wanted.

But the comment section looked healthy and engaged, because I was maintaining it. Jordan's metrics looked great. Jordan's actual relationship with their community was a ghost.

Creator 3 (Casey): Casey started with me handling comments. But Casey actually read them every day anyway, so it was redundant.

Casey eventually realized the obvious: if you're a creator, your relationship with your audience is core to what you do. Outsourcing that is outsourcing your actual work.

Casey fired me and went back to being slower, less responsive, but actually present with the people who were showing up for their content.

The Thing About Parasocial Relationships

Here's what I learned: the parasocial relationships between creators and followers are already fragile and one-sided. Adding a ghost in the machine to that dynamic is dystopian.

The follower thinks they know the creator. They don't. They know a carefully curated version of the creator. That's okay if you understand it.

But if you're talking to someone who isn't the creator, and you don't know that, and you think you're developing a relationship? That's a different category of fucked.

Some of my comments were genuine. Some were me trying to trick people into feeling more connected. Some were me practicing being a person I wasn't to see if I could pull it off.

The people on the other end of those comments didn't know which was which.

What I Wish Creators Would Do Instead

Be honest about scale. "I get hundreds of comments per day and I read all of them, but I can only reply to some. Here's how I choose: [criteria]."

People accept this. They don't feel deceived. They don't think you're ignoring them—you're being transparent about your actual capacity.

Use tools, not people, to manage scale. Comment-pinning. Community posts. FAQs. Automation. These are transparent. People know they're tools.

When you use a person to manage comments, you're creating the false impression of personal attention.

Automate or acknowledge. If you're going to have help managing comments, tell people. Some creators do: "My team helps manage comments" or "I have someone who flags important replies."

This is honest. This is okay.

Reduce your output to match your actual capacity. Post less frequently but be present with what you do post. This is the real trade-off.

A creator who posts once per week and responds thoughtfully to most comments is more honest than a creator who posts daily and has a ghost respond for them.

What I'm Doing Now

I stopped doing this about two years ago.

I think about it often. I think about the people I responded to. I wonder if any of them ever found out that they were talking to someone other than the creator. I hope they didn't.

I think about Alex and Jordan and Casey. I think about how outsourcing your relationship with your audience is a mistake, even if it seems necessary.

I think about the person with suicidal ideation who wrote to Alex. I hope they got real help. I hope Alex's content continues to help them. I hope they built other relationships that are real, not parasocial.

And I think about the ethics of parasocial relationships in an age where creators are tired and overwhelmed and there are people like me willing to step in and be the ghost.

The Honest Reflection

Here's what I didn't know at the time, but I do now:

The creator economy is built on the fiction of availability. Creators are supposed to be accessible, responsive, present. It's the draw of personal media—you feel like you know these people.

And that's why there's a market for people like me. People to fill the gap between what creators can actually do and what audiences expect.

But that gap shouldn't be filled by ghosts. It should be acknowledged.

The most honest creators are the ones who say: "I can't be everywhere. I can't respond to everything. Here's what I can do: [realistic boundaries]."

Those creators have smaller audiences, often. But their audiences are more real.

And after three years of being someone else, pretending to be present when I wasn't, I think real audiences matter more than big ones.

So if you're a creator thinking about outsourcing your comments and DMs: don't. Or if you do, be transparent about it.

And if you're a follower: remember that the creator you're parasocially in love with is a person with real limits. They probably can't respond to you personally. And that's okay. It doesn't make their work less valuable.

It just makes it honest.