this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2025
123 points (94.2% liked)
chat
8413 readers
141 users here now
Chat is a text only community for casual conversation, please keep shitposting to the absolute minimum. This is intended to be a separate space from c/chapotraphouse or the daily megathread. Chat does this by being a long-form community where topics will remain from day to day unlike the megathread, and it is distinct from c/chapotraphouse in that we ask you to engage in this community in a genuine way. Please keep shitposting, bits, and irony to a minimum.
As with all communities posts need to abide by the code of conduct, additionally moderators will remove any posts or comments deemed to be inappropriate.
Thank you and happy chatting!
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I'm not really disputing any of this except "original anti-racist meaning" because it doesn't seem like that's how it started even if that's what it morphed into around 2020
Original is imprecise.
Certainly for the blips on the graph, “Karen” predates the anti-racist meaning and can be argued to be the “origin”.
For most people, including many in the thread, the owl that posts about this occasionally, myself, we hadn’t heard of it until the spike in the graph, so that is the “origin” even if not chronologically first.
The spike is the popular origin people are referring to saying it has lost the “original” meaning since. Saying that the “original” was earlier isn’t so much a ‘dispute’ as a reframing of context. Neither is necessarily more valid until the priority of time vs spread is declared.
The origin is both anti-racist and predates the anti-racist meaning depending on context. Many point to the spike, but pointing to the clock blips is also correct.
Idk I feel like that's less of an origin than it is a popularization. Like, if someone asked for the origin of pepe I wouldn't say it started with 4chan edgelords even if that's how most people were exposed to it. I'd say it started in that webcomic but was popularized and turned into something else.
Ultimately a semantic issue but 乁[ ◕ ᴥ ◕ ]ㄏ