Not to throw shade at @kayaker’s story, but I always wonder how many of the “Karens” out there are just normal people who are also having a bad day, and have decided some silly hill of service is the one they’re going to die on?
This does NOT excuse the behavior of the ones that are making racial or social slurs (as examples), because that comes from someplace altogether different - but even even-keeled tokers can lose it, much less the more high-strung among us.
And since everyone has a camera in their pocket at all times, even if you lose it once, it is possible to be internet fodder forever.
Maybe the gentleman I mocked upthread just lost his wife, and wanted to make his wife’s favorite dish. Or maybe he was always an ass, it’s hard to know when we see only snippets of others life. Better to judge based on experience than a 30 second clip.
Of course if it’s a 30 second clip of someone shouting racial profanities, like I said, you don’t do that from a bad day, you had certain feelings long before you snapped.
For your sake, I hope nobody was. There’s no way that could be a good thing for you. Don’t mean to chide you, but it sounds like that wasn’t one of your better moments.
I was at an open park. Dogs, people, kids, play equipment, skating lanes.
I was sitting in the approved dog area, with a 5lb. Yorkie on my lap.
And a lady sat down maybe 10 feet from me and told me she was allergic to dogs. I said “It sucks to be you”
She went on to say my dog was making her sneezy.
After I called her a bad name(bad form, too bad) I told her it possibly would be in her best interest to move from this area since many dogs had been there. And then I lied and told her yeah, well Yorkies are hypoallergenic and she was just being the ‘bad word’ because she thought she was entitled.
This was years ago before the Karen meme.
Moral: there are always gonna be people like this. We’re lost in the name weeds. If it smells bad, it’s probably rotten.
Well, if she really was just inches away, I can understand it. Not that my opinion matters. I wasn’t there to see it, and the way you’ve described it could just be a figure of speech.
I have a “verb” name, like many, many others. Yes, I heard ALLLLL the jokes. Edit to add: I’m in my mid 50s and I still hear the jokes, but less often these days.
Megan, Linda, Barb, Heather, Catherine, Lisa…the name doesn’t really matter much when we’re talking about Karen behavior.
“Karen” is just an indicator of a specific type of white woman who is incredibly dangerous for black (and brown) people. The Karens that I always try to avoid threaten my job (“I’m going to talk to your manager and get you fired”) or my safety by calling the cops for a nonexistent slight or threat that they perceived.
The woman who called the cops on me for sitting in the park while watching my niece play (my niece was the only black kid in that park) was a Karen. So was the woman who called the cops on me when I was 11 because I was hiding in a tree in the common area during a game of manhunt with about a dozen other kids from the neighborhood. The lady who accused me of stealing her flip flops at the town water park and called the cops while I was working as a day camp counselor was also a Karen (It took everything in my power not to throw them at her after I found them 3 chairs away under the stuff that she had spread around her area).
Sending an incorrect order back to the kitchen isn’t Karen behavior unless you decide to take out all your stress on your server in the process. I also don’t consider the people I assisted as a call center customer service rep “Karens” because they were only escalated to me when something went very wrong with their expensive purchases.
Men can absolutely be Karens but white men who are exhibiting this behavior usually turn to threats of physical violence instead of weaponizing their race (and gender) to get their way.
Much like the appropriation and evolution of “woke” has completely distorted the original meaning, Karen has evolved to mean “a difficult person”. To people who look like me they aren’t just difficult people, they’re potentially dangerous.
I don’t think it’s fair for folks to be vilified on social media for having a bad day, but I don’t think it’s fair to excuse blatant racism either.
Yeah, but it is odd- looking at ATMB, most members say that sexism is bad… but they are okay with karen as its funny. Either you are woke or not. Arguing against sexism & bigotry only when it is convenient just makes someone a hypocrite.
Which is one reason why it is sexist.
Exactly.
By no means is that type either white, female or liberal. My wife can tell you all that the biggest assholes to retail workers are the MAGAs.
I just started reading the biography of tragic musical figure Nick Drake and was puzzled to came across, "Until he was eight he shared his room with his bespectacled Karen nanny, Naw Rosie Paw Tun, known as ‘Nan’. "
A footnote explains, “The Karen people are indigenous to the Thailand-Burma border region. Persecuted by the Burmese, they were loyal to the British, particularly during the Second World War.”
I never understood the rush to make Karen mean exclusively white lady, I grew up in a heavily Hispanic neighborhood and Mexican women love calling the cops for insignificant infractions just as much as white women.
I thought the original use of the term was much more specific and hence more interesting than it has become. It was originally just about the way certain white middle class women use their status to harass black people – usually men – who are just doing normal human things in public places. The reason it became a thing is entirely because of camera phones and social media.
More than a whiff of that primal Keep Our Women Safe From Black Men fear that has killed many innocent men, historically. Pointing out the way white people own public spaces and can push blacks out of it for any or no reason.
So there was real moral outrage, but it immediately got mixed up with misogyny and class resentment. So there was something for everyone to grab on to.
The Karen haircut meme was poplularised by Kate Gosselin of Kate plus Eight fame. Short in the back so her hair doesn’t get mussed up while having sex, and then on to other business. You don’t see that, “fuck me and leave my hair alone” look anymore.
Hey, how do Felicias feel? One of my kids said “Bye, Felicia”, and I was so proud, as a dorky white dad, to say “Hey, Ice Cube, in the movie Friday!”
I often think of all of our Ron (and Ron-Duh) stories from back then. But the original Ron wasn’t a snoop or a bitch, his defining trait was being SO full of himself, and thinking he was SO smart, and SO cool…
I guess I think of O.G. Ron because I run into stories about current Rons… and a handful of real-life Rons!
I think it is sexist or has devolved into sexism from its original use to describe a racist white woman and is now used to criticize any woman who is seen as bossy or demanding. Especially since “Karen” has no male counterpart name that has stuck around with any consistency. That really tells you it is meant to be aimed at mostly women, IMO. I also haven’t heard of too many demanding or even racist men being referred to as “a Karen.”