Why do some people think Friend is basically Everyman 2.0?

I've come to see people say that Friend is just some irrelevant easter egg or metaphor for darkness itself, but then like, why does it have the DEVICE prefix? And why does it have all that Sweepstakes content for it? And why is there a ball machine prediction about a certain chair that's most definitely Friend kicking our asses? And why does it show up very prominently in the mantle minigame that's basically mandatory to fight the Knight? And why does it hurt us in Chapter 5? And why is there dialogue about being a Friend does not make them yours, those teeth they bite? It's extremely strange to me that Friend is just both so irrelevant that people don't even think they're even a character, but at the same time they get a ton of attention for some reason. My guess is that they'll probably show up in the Weird Route/aborted Weird Route; it's just so peculiar that this one entity or entities get this many references for no good reason.