patrick.net

I called my wife a Karen today because she was telling me how happy she was with how everyone was wearing masks and social distancing when she went out for a walk this morning.

She got real pissed at me. A month ago I called her a Karen she had no idea what I was talking about. Her only source of news is ABC and Facebook.

Talked to her about it. Her definition of a Karen is an obnoxious person who does what she wants without regard for other people. I asked her if a Karen would wear a mask, she said no because they don’t give a shit.

Asked my buddy to define a Karen. He agreed with her definition, although he is more tied into conservative media and he does recall that it used to mean something different but has changed recently.

Checked urban dictionary, it agrees with them.

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Karen

I get that a Karen has always meant a bitchy woman who wants to talk to the manager. But now if you google it’s basically synonymous with a racist and there’s a large number of recent articles stating that is the definition.

I can’t find anything on the first page of google about a Karen being some soccer mom calling the cops for people for not wearing masks at a park.

This really shook me because Karen was one of the few effective linguistic attacks the right had on liberals. Call someone a Karen we all knew what it meant. It appears to me that there is a significant effort going on right now to take it away.