A “wife guy” is not just a husband. He is a man who has risen to prominence online by posting content about his wife. Tripp is better known as the “curvy wife guy.” Following him was the “elf wife guy,” a gamer whose dirty laundry was aired after he blocked his wife, who works as a professional elf, on Twitter; the “fake wife guy,” the man who pretended that he was his wife; and the “cliff wife guy,” a YouTuber who published a video of his wife falling off a minor Hawaiian cliff (she was fine).

A man posting about his wife on the internet is usually banal, so it is almost impressive when he has managed to make it appear, instead, ludicrous. The wife guy defines himself through a kind of overreaction to being married. His wife hurt herself, and he filmed it. He is sexually attracted to his wife, and he talks about it as if he were some kind of hero. The wife guy is a mutation of the “Instagram husband,” the man who exists to take flattering photos of his wife, except that the wife guy is no longer content behind the scenes. He is crafting a whole persona around being that guy. He married a woman, and now that is his personality.

A wife guy is not embarrassing because he is overly devoted to his wife, the sexist idea that used to be called “being whipped” and is now more fashionably referred to as “being a cuck.” He is worthy of suspicion because he appears to be using his devotion to his wife for personal gain. Tripp has made a brand for himself off his wife’s body, not his own. He has leveraged it into Instagram brand deals for natural shaving creams and Dunkin’-themed sneakers; in his music video, he raps as his wife dances mutely in a swimsuit. He has taken a rather sexist tradition — of men gaining social status through the physical appearance of their wives — and pitched it as a newly enlightened stance.

The wife guy exists at the intersection of relationship status and influencer branding, and he exhibits a heady combination of privilege and desperation. In this way, he feels related to the incel (short for “involuntary celibate”), the guy who has crafted a whole online persona around his nonexistent sex life. But where the incel acts entitled to a relationship with a woman, the wife guy seems to expect to be congratulated for entering into one, sometimes with literal rewards. The wife-guy identity is often not just a personal choice but a professional gambit.

These sincere wife guys eerily align with a running internet joke. The weird Twitter account @dril is the master of pathetic wife-related disclosures, like “if this post gets 5000 likes, my wife will give me back my inhaler” and “someone on here just called me a ‘Cunk’ because my wife wont let me buy a harp.” The comedian Rob Delaney has made his own contributions to the genre, with tweets like “Just hastily carved this wooden ram to notify my Wife that I’m horney.”