u/t3hgrl on reddit:

I have some strong opinions on this topic. It really is the default to talk about a group of people and most people out there won’t be bothered by it. Does that mean it is no longer a gendered term? Absolutely not. We’ve defaulted to male pronouns to refer to all humans for a really really long time, and it has never gone the other way. Using female pronouns to talk about a group has always been belittling, and there’s no female equivalent of “guys.” One of my favourite lines for when a man tries to tell me it’s okay to use guys because it’s completely gender-neutral is to ask “oh okay, so do you f*ck guys?” (Works for “dude” as well by the way!)

Personally I’ve been trying to remove it from my lexicon and have been having luck with saying y’all, everyone, friends, you two (or three, or four, etc.), and fam. “Y’all” is also not at all local to me either but I’ve found a lot of people have been using it as somewhat of a silly alternative and it’s become more accepted (in Canada. Might be a bigger stretch in Ireland.) I appreciate hearing people work on removing “guys” from their use and it does actually stick out to me when someone refers to me as a “guy,” but I have never corrected anyone. I see this as a change I’m working on for my own language and am not shy about sharing why, and I see a lot of people working on that same change (especially in LGBTQ2+ communities) so I foresee “guys” becoming much less common in the future.