We’ve been meaning, for a while now, to discuss the topic of Yelpies: The bizarre community that populates Yelp events in Philadelphia, as well as, to be sure, populating the Yelp site with user reviews on a plethora of establishments for which, we are told, they are not paid. (Here at Philebrity, Yelpies are called “interns.”) In addition to being able to do unlikely things like get Mexican Post probably the most press it has had, ever, the Yelpies have also constructed a social scene unto themselves that would mostly be, to paraphrase Anthony Michael Hall, “demented and sad, but social” were it not for the super interesting post-post-modernness of it all. OK, maybe not super interesting, but you get my drift. Here’s the deal: The Yelpies populate the Yelp with content for free. Yelp invites them out once a month as a thank you. One Yelpie meets another, and suddenly, you’ve got, like, Friday night at the Barbary minus everything that may make the Barbary interesting in its own right. It’s a bizarre thing. We once asked our buddy/Yelp Philly editor Carrie Estok about the phenom, and the exchange went something like this:

PHILEBRITY: So, hey, nice to see you! So, uh, [surreptitiously points to back booth] are these your Yelpies?
CARRIE: Um, they’re called Yelp-ers. But yes. That is them.
PHILEBRITY: So, uh, what’s the deal? Where do they come from?
CARRIE: I have no idea!

Well, we do. Yelpies come from that weird intersection of College Friends Who Stayed In College Town and The Village Of Promosexuals. To wit: At right, is local publicist Paige Wolf, nice lady buuuut… prominent Yelpie. Yelp-I-P? Anyway. She’s singing a song, at a Yelp event, with words she wrote about Yelp and MySpace and Facebook. After the event, she posted it on YouTube… and then sent Philebrity an email about it. And then we posted about it. I’m sorry, my brain just imploded. Whoever these Yelpies are, well, one thing is for sure: They’re not afraid of the meta.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 4th, 2008 at 2:40 pm.