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WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A KAREN?

It’s an eye-rolling retort that Karens has grown to know way too well: “Fine, KAREN.”

Sure, that’s their name, but “Karen” has come to stand for so much more on the Internet.

According to a shared joke, Karen is a middle-aged white woman with an asymmetrical bob telling her to speak to the boss, who happens to be as arrogant as she is stupid.

It’s a blessing that the trend is beginning to skewer. Throughout 2018, a handful of feminist names were added to online videos of white women sexually bullying people of color. The villain in this one such film, a woman calling the cops over a group of African American men holding a picnic in a park in Oakland, California, came to be known as BBQ Becky (another name attributed to white women online).

The trend is thus embedded in the history of the black American Internet, an effort to find meaning in real-world injustice and inequality. Making somebody a Karen means naming a specific behavior: it’s an inclusive term, so if you don’t behave like that, it shouldn’t bother you. Trying to hijack the essence of the meme is “a pretty Karen thing to do.”

The meme had a different resonance at the coronavirus moment, gradually being extended to individuals arguing against societal distancing steps or using the pandemic as a justification to control others selectively.