What’s striking is just how natural the “reply girl” phenomenon is. Some video becomes popular — could be a way-cool internet cat, music video, or the video below, produced by Motherboard’s Vice big sister, about said phenomenon — and it’s garnering tens of millions of hits. A reply girl records a quick video, featuring some amount of cleavage, and posts it to the popular video as a reply. The two are thus linked, however tenuous that link actually is. Some amount of spillover is practically guaranteed, and that traffic spillage translates to a check for the reply girl.

This is the profession of Alejandra Gaitan: being one of the most loathed personalities on YouTube, weathering death threats and the leers of internet creeps for ad revenue scraps. Yes, there are humans behind the reply girl phenomenon. Enjoy this reply girl behind-the-scenes, courtesy of Vice’s My Life Online series.

Reach this writer at michaelb@motherboard.tv.