He is male, of average height, and wears a gray suit while hovering in the background of a majority of the MTA's "Courtesy Counts" ads. David Johnson, author of an essay about the symbolic import of the figure, calls him, "Tie Guy."

Johnson is not a fan.

"Tie Guy is usually the person who's bothered or inconvenienced by impolite behavior," Johnson told WNYC. "He's the person who's being annoyed because someone is trying to entertain on the subway — they're dancing and rapping."

Johnson's beef with Tie Guy is that he's a gentrifier — that the rules of the city are increasingly fashioned and enforced for his ilk. In fact, Johnson's essay is titled, "The Tyranny of Tie Guy."

MTA spokesman Paul Fleuranges rolled his eyes when asked about Johnson's interpretation.

"OK, obviously he's done a lot more thinking about this than we ever did," Fleuranges said. He added that Tie Guy is simply one of the "bubble people" created by the MTA to urge riders to be more considerate of one another.

Fleuranges, who helped design the "Courtesy Counts" campaign three years ago, countered that the bubble people are drawn to be “non-denominational,” “ethnic neutral,” and represent no particular economic class.

Fleuranges offered a handy guide to its iconography: the red bubble people rudely pole hog or manspread, while the green bubble people model proper etiquette by not littering or blocking the doors. "And the gray people are just in the background," he said.

But Johnson isn't backing down from his class-based theory of Tie Guy.

"Let’s face it. He represents the the wealthy elite in New York," Johnson argued. "The people who don't necessarily pay their fair share for public goods like subways."

The dispute — which can be heard in full on the audio player, complete with an obscure reference to a Talking Heads tune — will soon be moot, at least for a while. The MTA has begun phasing out "Courtesy Counts" in favor of a new ad campaign recognizing riders who saw something and said something. But Fleuranges said the courtesy campaign has struck a chord with riders and could return.

Attempts to reach Tie Guy for comment were unsuccessful.