this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2025
123 points (94.2% liked)

chat

8407 readers
142 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
 

Good women are young, quiet, have pretty long hair (never dyed a unnatural colour though!) and never speak up about being mistreated, ever. You want to complain about a genuine problem? Sorry, you're a Karen. Ask people to social distance? Karen. Nicely tell people to please be quiet during a movie? Karen. Ripped off by corporate greed and want a refund? Karen.

Be silent, be feminine and behave, woman.

It sucks because it actually used to describe real harrassment that black service workers experience. Now it's just "Mouthy mom aged women with short dyed hair"

I've even seen a male black service worker be called a "male Karen" I shit you not.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] Flyberius@hexbear.net 4 points 19 hours ago

I've never been on board with the Karen thing. Far too often I've seen it applied to any woman standing up for herself.

[–] abc@hexbear.net 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

... Wait, what?

'Karen' has morphed that much in common, modern usage?

I am not saying you are wrong, I am saying that I have not encountered this... probably worth noting that I entirely do not use corpo social media, I don't watch livestreams, I basically just use YouTube, which I have done a decent job of curating and manicuring my feed into not serving me up slop or sending me into some unwanted content pipeline... so I acknowledge I may be out of touch here with the modern lingo.

That being said, I still use 'karen' to mean basically a vastly over entitled person rudely and aggressively demanding to see the manager, demanding to get special treatment, demeaning anyone else around her as some kind of lesser social category of some kind... basically a delusional petty tyrant, often classist, racist, bigoted, etc.

I don't even use the term as specific to women, I'll call anyone of any sex or gender acting like that, though I do realize that most people who use the term use it in reference to women.

... Have the rightoids really bastardized and inverted the term that fucking hard?

Is this a Zoomer or Gen A thing?

I am genuinely asking this, because I go fairly far out of my way to not view or listen to or interact with aggressively ignorant morons.

[–] FlakesBongler@hexbear.net 73 points 1 day ago (4 children)

I mean, Woke used to mean "being aware of systemic oppression" and now it's shorthand for "anything not white, straight and male"

Slang always gets coopted by those in power

[–] OldSoulHippie@hexbear.net 46 points 1 day ago (3 children)

To the same end, "Fake News" was a term used heavily by liberals in response to the enshitification of right wing news around 2015. When Trump first started gaining momentum, there were a bunch of news stories that got amplified that were completely made up or used dodgy means to exploit statistics and stuff. The right started shouting it back to everything they didn't like and now it's theirs.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] Dirt_Owl@hexbear.net 33 points 1 day ago (2 children)

It fucking sucks. It's indoctrinating a whole new generation of sexism

[–] FlakesBongler@hexbear.net 25 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I don't run into too many kids these day, but when I do, I usually have to play the "That's a really fucked up thing to say" card

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Sinisterium@hexbear.net 15 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

People believed that they would just let the new generations grow up without indoctrinating all the isms on them?

Do they think boomers were born racist/sexist?

[–] Dirt_Owl@hexbear.net 14 points 1 day ago (2 children)

True, I was naive to think humanity was making progress doomer

[–] tocopherol@hexbear.net 5 points 1 day ago

I think we are still overall, it's hard to tell when we can't see outside of the present. One example that gives me some faith is that according to stats I've seen the BLM protests had more popular approval in the US than the civil rights marches and MLK at the time.

[–] Sinisterium@hexbear.net 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Well they do now. The fact that people are ever more aware of facts like this is progress from ten years ago.

[–] Dirt_Owl@hexbear.net 9 points 1 day ago

That's a silver lining at least hopium

[–] Sinisterium@hexbear.net 24 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Wasnt woke first used by black americans to refer to being aware of the race construct? Similar thing happened to Karen, its origin comes from primarily black american women working in customer service jobs and using it to refer to entitled white customers who use the “white woman’s tears/distress/discomfort” as a tool to exort her power?

[–] tocopherol@hexbear.net 6 points 1 day ago

Yes, it was used in that way as early as the 20s I think, or earlier. On the wiki page about "Karen" they mention that:

In African-American culture, there is a history of calling difficult white women or those who "weaponize" their position by a generic pejorative name.[6] In the antebellum era (1815–1861), "Miss Ann" was used.[7] In the early 1990s, "Becky" was used.[8] As late as 2018, before the use of "Karen" caught on, alliterative names matching particular incidents were used, such as "Barbecue Becky", "Cornerstore Caroline", and "Permit Patty".

[–] boiledfrog@hexbear.net 10 points 1 day ago

Just keep changing words faster and faster

Woke? You mean shalazombabom

[–] Belly_Beanis@hexbear.net 37 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It's become a way to say the c-word or call women female dogs without saying the actual slurs. I've never liked it because I noticed right away that's how it gets used.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Luffy879@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Wtf?

I never heard of this use, and mostly I and everyone else still uses it as an acronyme for a mix of „Choosing beggar, racist fuck, and generally someone who has a stick up their ass so far they feel the need to enforce every tinyest rule“

[–] spectre@hexbear.net 8 points 1 day ago

That's fine, but out in the wild, I see a lot of usage that's synonymous with "bitch". The definition was never going to remain precise once the Internet got a hold of it.

[–] FanofOatmeal@hexbear.net 3 points 1 day ago

the first whispers of "karen" back in 2017ish just adhere to the mantra of "never insult honkie males"

honkie females is the furthest they'll go

[–] Erika3sis@hexbear.net 32 points 1 day ago

The superstructure of white supremacy leading to the appropriation and complete gutting and twisting of any and all terms originating in New Afrikan lects, in a manner that ends up only serving various systems of oppression, strrrrikes again

[–] ElChapoDeChapo@hexbear.net 25 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Seriously hate how chuds co-opted the term to mean the opposite of what it originally did

[–] Sinisterium@hexbear.net 16 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Libs did it first. Sometimes they use (white) in front of women to make misogynistic comments but palpable to a progressive audience.

Oh hey something we're also often guilty of.

[–] MaoTheLawn@hexbear.net 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Was that libs? I really don't think it was. I think that talking about white women specifically started as an overly online politics thing - used by right wingers but also by chapoish online Leftists - or at least within the chapo circles there were those who found a home in using it, even if it didn't represent the majority of users.

I think it wasn't completely without validity - white men get a fair share of blaming (as they should), but that specificity missed out white women - a group it's fair to say has been very involved in liberal activist behaviours, 'girlboss' hustle culture, and a group that at the top is typified by Pelosi and her fangirls.

Then the rest of the internet took it and ran, and now I would be uncomfortable using it or giving it credit, because it's just become synonymous with general mysoginy. The dogwhistle is now audible to human ears.

load more comments (1 replies)

it's the new b word

[–] Carcharodonna@hexbear.net 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I thought it originally came from that early Nintendo Switch advert where a girl brings her switch to a hip rooftop party full of ridiculously attractive people and they all start playing. The "Karen" thing was a joke about her trying to force people to play video games instead of socializing.

[–] Dirt_Owl@hexbear.net 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That sounds way funnier than what it really is lol

[–] Carcharodonna@hexbear.net 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Obviously it morphed quite a bit but I feel like I remember this being the origin of “Karen”: https://amp.knowyourmeme.com/memes/nintendo-switch-karen

[–] tocopherol@hexbear.net 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

There were uses in the same vein before that, from wikipedia:

For the term "Karen", several possible origins have been proposed.[11] Early uses of Karen as a joke punchline include the airheaded character Karen (played by Amanda Seyfried) from the 2004 film Mean Girls, Dane Cook's 2005 sketch "The Friend Nobody Likes" on his album Retaliation,[12]

I remember at the time the Dane Cook special that had this joke was super popular, I heard people quote the joke before the term became as widespread.

[–] sleeplessone@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 day ago

Dane Cook

You've just unlocked bad memories of the aughts.

[–] PKMKII@hexbear.net 17 points 1 day ago (8 children)

Likewise, incel communities were originally gender inclusive and focused more on physical and mental issues/disabilities than toxic mindsets. Until the misogynists moved in and pushed everyone else out.

[–] abc@hexbear.net 3 points 1 day ago

Yeah, from my research on the topic a few years ago, it was a website founded by a woman that turned into something de facto unmoderated once the original founders left, and that made the misogynists go wild - all the way back in like 2003.

load more comments (6 replies)
[–] RION@hexbear.net 15 points 1 day ago (4 children)

"Karen" started out as calling out racism

I feel like I hear this claim pretty often here, but did it really? Pretty much all the early Karen stuff I can find are the she took the kids/can I speak to a manager/vaccines cause autism angles.

[–] PKMKII@hexbear.net 25 points 1 day ago

I remember it originally meaning any expression of upper class privilege in the feminine. Picking on retail staff, the “don’t you know who I am” kind of attitude.

[–] Bruja@hexbear.net 20 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (5 children)

Various names have been used as ‘white women calling cops on black people nicknames’.

  • 2018 BBQ Becky - YouTuber posted a video entitled “White Woman Called Out for Racially Targeting Black Men Having BBQ in Oakland”.
  • 2018 Permit Patty - Oakland, California woman called the police on an eight-year-old black girl and her mother for selling water outside her apartment. Her profession as the CEO of a medicinal marijuana company for animals was pointed at as illustrative of the difference between being white and black in America.
  • 2018 Pool Patrol Paula - Arrested for accosting a group of black teenagers while trying to forcibly remove them from a public swimming pool in South Carolina.
  • 2018 Baggage Claim - A female baggage claim attendant who was filmed refusing a black woman the name and contact of a manager, after the attempted to report a customer service issue at Logan International Airport in Boston.
  • 2018 Cornerstore Caroline - A female resident of Brooklyn, New York, who became the subject of a online scutiny, after accusing a nine-year old black child of sexual assault and calling the police on him. The allegations were later refuted by surveillance footage of the incident.
  • 2018 Golf Cart Gail - A white woman who was the subject of controversy, after calling the police on a black father watching his son's soccer game.

6 major incidents in 2018 alone. But a 2020 viral incident that got ‘Karen’ to stick.

  • 2020 Central Park Karen - The incident that led to the internet coming to a consensus, much to the chagrin of nice women named Karen everywhere. "Central Park Karen" is the white cop-caller nickname of Amy Cooper, who was recorded calling the police on an African American birder in Central Park in New York City after being asked by him to leash her dog in the park.
  • later in 2020 San Francisco Karen - A white man and woman confronted a person of color who was stenciling Black Lives Matter in chalk on their own property. In the video, the woman, Lisa Alexander, assumed James Juanillo was not the property owner and called the police.

A white couple call the police on me, a person of color, for stencilling a #BLM chalk message on my own front retaining wall. “Karen” lies and says she knows that I don’t live in my own house, because she knows the person who lives here.
https://twiiit.com/jaimetoons/status/1271300265170186240

Since then it’s been almost entirely “Karen” and like “woke” and so many other appropriations of Black culture, has been taken from original anti-racist meaning to just be another misogynistic term for “disliked woman” or “man acting like an entitled woman”.

[–] gwilikers@lemmy.ml 2 points 13 hours ago

You have an impressive knowledge of the history of this topic.

[–] Bruja@hexbear.net 12 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

People were absolutely using “Karen” amongst a few other names for the entitled white woman stereotype, but the catalyst for standardising “Karen” was specifically about the racist Central Park Karen video viral. Around that time and George Floyd and BLM summer riots. The peak “Karen” was about BLM against racist white women. And it has since been watered down like a lot of the energy of the summer of 2020.

As this graph shows, “Karen haircut” peaked during the 2020 summer of BLM.

[–] Sinisterium@hexbear.net 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I remember the “good karen” video where a girl just flipped off a bunch of police officers.

It was truly a time where everyone in america was anti-pig. Imagine if the bernards actually did something with it.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)
[–] buckykat@hexbear.net 15 points 1 day ago (2 children)

A lot of the early examples I remember involved calling the cops on black people basically for existing.

For example, this article from 2021 which says, "It has gone on to become one of the most widely publicized so-called "Karen" incidents, where a white person, typically a woman, calls police to report a Black or brown person engaged in mundane activities."

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Gorillatactics@hexbear.net 11 points 1 day ago

The Karen meme was actually started by the Myanmar coup government to gain support for its ethnic cleansing campaigns against ethic groups including the Karen. But the westerners riled up by this psyop didn't know about the demographics of myanmar and created a lore around a certain type of white woman that they would focus the anger the psyop instilled in them on.

load more comments
view more: next ›