Stop Saying Karen

Women actually named Karen do not deserve to have their name degraded and dehumanized. Karen used to be a respected, normal name — the kind of name you’d hear everywhere without a second thought. Then came the memes, the jokes, the viral videos. Teenagers made them, adults kept them alive. And somewhere along the way, Karen stopped being a name (to them) and started being a catchall insult for every woman people wanted to shame. Now it’s out of control. No one even stops to think what they’re doing. The latest example? The story of Ajike Owens and Susan Lorincz. Susan — not Karen — shot and killed Ajike. Yet the internet calls her “Killer Karen.” But she isn’t Karen. She is Susan. No matter what she did before the murder, calling her “Karen” doesn’t hold her accountable — it erases her real name and drags innocent women into the mud with her. What’s even more painful is that women actually named Karen are just as horrified by what Susan did. They’re just as disgusted by the viral video...

Dhar Mann calls himself a motivational speaker. He claims to teach kindness, empathy, and respect. Yet scroll through his videos, and you’ll find an entire catalog built around one thing: humiliating and dehumanizing women under the name Karen. He’s produced dozens of titles such as: “RACIST KAREN Gets Restaurant SHUT DOWN,” “RACIST KAREN Won’t RENT To BLACK Lady,” “KAREN Calls Cops on Black Delivery Driver,” “ENTITLED KAREN Takes HANDICAP Spot,” “KAREN Lets CHILD Kick Seats on Plane,” “KAREN Steals From Elderly Black Woman.” and “Evil Karens Humiliated By Strangers (compilation)” Each video follows the same predictable formula: the “evil Karen” behaves horribly, gets “karma,” and serves as the moral lesson of the day. But beneath the glossy thumbnails and the message of “kindness,” there’s something darker happening — the systematic dehumanization of a real name and a real group of women. It’s not about teaching empathy. It’s about monetizing humiliation. By reducing every “Karen” to ...

This isn’t just about what started out as a meme. It’s about how a woman’s name — once ordinary, and once well respected — was turned into a worldwide insult. A label that doesn’t hurt the people behaving badly, but instead harms millions of real women who happen to be named Karen. It seems many people think the “Karen” insult started because of a woman named Karen — but that isn’t true at all. The term “Karen” actually has a traceable history that shows how a name was twisted into something harmful. It began in pop culture with Mean Girls’ friendly Karen Smith (2004), followed by comedian Dane Cook’s 2005 “comedy” sketch The Friend Nobody Likes, where he used the name Karen in a negative way. About a decade later, that small spark turned into a wildfire. In 2017, a now-deleted Reddit user known as Karmacop9 began posting angry rants about his ex-wife — whose name was reportedly Karen — after she was awarded custody of their children and their house. Those bitter posts gained traction ...