Gosh, that Trixie and Chad sound like something straight out of 1980’s The Official Preppy Handbook. But I thought their names were Sloan and Kyle.
No, as dalej42 says, it is or was local slang for a particular kind of Lincoln Park woman, usually freshly out of college, typically Big 10, perhaps living on daddy’s money, and pretty much all the things dalej42 described at the end of his post. Kinda of a vacuous, superficial party girl kind of character.
Stacy? Not the girl for me. But her Mom? She had it going on.
Yeah, Karen will likely eventually be displaced by some other character, it’s just luck of the draw this time around. As **Beckdawreck **mentions, there are other names that get pop-cultural associations among some demographics. Which is not to ignore that ocassionally a name *does *get debased on a more sustained manner by the association with a character archetype, off the top of my head I am thinking of Guido and of course Lolita. I’d start really worrying when papers start printing headlines about “a bunch of karens creating a disturbance at Kroger’s”
At least it wasn’t Danaerys 
Which BTW brings us to the case of “Buffy”, whose name was rescued from ignominy as the archetypal WASP prepette by the Vampire Slayer movie/TV show (but was chosen for the character to begin with precisely because it would be so un-badass).
Yes, “Chad” and “Stacey” seem to be the hot names for hot dudes that the Incels can’t be and the hot chix they can’t have. Does anyone know the backstory for these choices of names? That isn’t obvious as far as I can tell. I don’t recall seeing these names in any similar context until fairly recent years when “Incels” started becoming a thing.
And fans of Star Trek TOS will of course remember Herbert.
My younger brother is Harry. Well before the Harry Potter phenomenon. He was teased horribly.
It’s our maternal Grandfathers name.
His middle name is Payton. Which would’ve been cool when he was in highschool.
Harry Payton Lastname sounds ok. But Payton Harry Lastname doesn’t work.
It was his bad luck.
He grew up well. And got over it.
This guy named “Adolph” would like a quick word with the O.P.
I had a boss named Adolph. He was African American. I don’t think he ever got Hitler cracks that I saw. Maybe because he was a good guy?
I did just realize that anyone growing up with a Karen name is likely to be spared most of the teasing. It’s not really a thing most kids will understand as they’re not really exposed to the concept of a ‘Karen’ until they’re in their late teens and beginning to work retail jobs. Hopefully, by then, most of the childish name calling is over.
There’s a 20-ish woman at a grocery store near me named Isis. I’m sure she’s been asked many times if that’s her real name.
There’s also a New Age bookstore in Denver that changed its name to “Goddess Isis” after it was vandalized, and the culprits admitted that its name was the reason why.
One of the most horrible people I have ever known was named Karen (if you’re wondering if she was the person who, after, she was in a near-fatal car accident, had the newspaper and a TV station do stories about it, and the reporters’ e-mail boxes crashed in their wake, you’re right) but I have also known some very nice people named Karen.
I also remember when MAD magazine used “Bruce” as a stock name for gay and/or effeminate men, until they got enough blowback to realize that wasn’t a good idea on any level.
NM, dupe
Just for fun, I looked through Urban Dictionary, and the first use of Karen, as in the “can I see the manager?” type of personality, I see from late 2017. I seem to remember hearing it first either late 2018 or early 2019. (I remember because a friend of mine was getting divorced from a Karen at the time and when the slang hit, it seemed strangely appropriate, given this particular Karen’s personality.)
I doubt it. Karen has been used exactly as it is now for at least four years on Twitter.
I worked with someone for a few years who’s name is Aaron. I think he was called Aaron a handful of times a day, his name just sort of became A-a-ron.
For the few people living under a rock…A-a-ron.
Sigh, will no one think of the Betties? (Bettys?) Biker Betty, Sweaty Betty, Bull-Dyke Betty?
I suspect that use of the name for a gay man was much broader than in MAD, however; my parents regularly used “Bruce” as a stereotypical gay name in the 1960s and 1970s, and neither of them were MAD readers.
How long ago was this?
“Bruce” apparently has been a stock name for gay or effeminate men for some time. In the late 1960’s and through 1970’s, Anita Bryant made much news for her very active anti-gay crusade. At some point she was quoted as saying:
ETA: Just saw kenobi 65’s ninja. The timing is about right. Your parents probably got that from Anita Bryant.
Despite their use of the dismissive stereotype, my parents were (and are) both flaming liberals, and didn’t like Bryant. A few minutes of googling doesn’t give me any good answers for when/where “Bruce = gay” originated, but I would be surprised if it was Bryant who coined it.
(And, of course, the term that conservative Christians now use dismissively is “God didn’t create Adam and Steve,” since Steve rhymes with Eve.)
Recently I learned about Kevinism, which describes the tendency for German-speaking parents to name their kids exotic, unusual first-names. The bolded paragraph below is particularly relevant to the discussion:
There was a parody of the song “Big Bad John” called “Big Bad Bruce,” maybe that’s were it came from.