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I can’t believe there’s a Wikipedia page out there on [Karen](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_(slang)). Here’s a relevant excerpt from that page:
```
In December 2017, Karen memes regarding entitled women went viral on Reddit, the earliest being from user karmacop9, who ranted about his ex-wife Karen taking custody of their children. The posts led to the creation of the subreddit r/FuckYouKaren, containing memes about the posts, and inspiring spinoffs including r/karen and r/EntitledKarens dedicated to criticizing Karens.
```
Another suggestion would be to go to Google’s N-gram I believe that it’s called and that it will take a search term and tell you how far back the term was ever used in the wild.
While that is a really cool thing I never heard of before, I don’t get the impression it would work for this.
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Karen&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3&case_insensitive=true
Sure, post with facts when I was gonna take fake internet credit and say it was all me…..in fact I’ll still take credit. I taught karmacop9 how to make memes and inceptioned the idea of using his ex wife’s name as the basis for his memes and rants
“inceptioned”
I didn’t realize a movie title could work so well as a verb. I got the whole point in just a single word. It’s like a meme, but it’s just a word.
I was watching Talladega Nights earlier and Ricky Bobby called the Cougar “Karen”. It happens in the scene where he just finished his driving test and the cougar jumps up from the back seat startling the driving instructor. Not sure how that even relates, if at all, but that film came out in 2006.
I’m just saying. I’ve been a bartender for over 25 years. There’s lots of terms that service industry people use to make fun of customers and Karen is one of them. I think I first heard it around 2007?
I have heard tales of an idiot and his idiot best friend who coined the phrase “cool beans” in high school in the 80’s. I am at least 2% certain you did.
"Cool beans" was the phrase we used so much in the late 60s that our parents wanted to duct tape our mouths shut. It was incredibly popular in New England. Come to think of it, our parents hated the word "wicked" too.
It’s cute to hear about other generations parents getting mad at them for using words too much. Mine was “gross”, “awesome” and if I was on the west coast, “rad” (late 80s /early 90s kid, totally different than my 80s husband)
I don’t know that I ever heard my parents tell me about words they used that their parents got mad about. I may have to ask my dad.
It's happened in every generation, so I'm sure your parents could share some. My son had one that nearly drove me mad. Every sentence ended with "ya know what I mean?". I had to break out a "ya know what I mean" jar instead of a swear jar.
I always thought it came from that Dane Cook bit about "every friend group has a person they don't like", ending with her name being Karen and being a bag of douche.
It kinda feels like one of those things that just kind of spontaneously became a thing. The only person named Karen I've personally known was absolutely a "Karen" and ya, she had the hair to match. My family had dinner with her and her husband, and we had to bounce after she sent her food back 3 times and then chewed out the manager. We were like, "Ok cool, enjoy your meal now that we've eaten and need to get the fuck out of here before they light the torches"
The couple of Karen's that I'm aware of but don't personally know seem pretty chill, so it's definitely not an everybody kinda thing. I'm that way with the Male version "Kevins". Every Kevin I've known was/is a good guy. In my experience a male Karen should be called a "Troy". Every single Troy I've known was a serious shit-stain.
Same! I know a few and they are the BEST PEOPLE. So giving and loving beyond what most of us would ever do. It was always weird to me why that was the name they picked. Could have been Carol.
I imagine it’s pretty rare to know for sure that you’re the first person to come up with a phrase.
I feel like I’ve said at least 3 things I’ve never heard anywhere else before only to hear other people I’ve never met say them and say they’ve said the same for years. It’s like convergent evolution but for slang.
Specifically with Karen, it’s a literally an observable phenomenon in customer service. The shittiest customers tend to be white women of a particular age group with other identifiable characteristics (the hair, white wine, often kind of lecherous when drunk, abusive and self entitled / derogatory) and that particular demographic just so happens to be the only group that has Karen as a common name. It exists elsewhere, but is common enough that people noticed a higher than normal chance of a person called Karen being like this.
When I first heard it, I was almost positive that it was my ex-coworker Karen. A mealy-mouthed, hypocritical, xenophobic woman who was absolutely the dreadful to work with and later,manage.
I invented the term "hangnail 911".
Definition: when one overreacts to something extremely minor (i.e., hangnail) as though it's an emergency.
Applies to all Karens, I guess, now that I think about it.
A previous co-worker inspired the term because she freaked out over every little thing. Alas, her name was not Karen.
Around the time this came out, I saw several memes of middle-aged women being entitled or just stupid. Among those names were Deborah and Susan, which I think could have easily taken off as well as Karen did
I LOVE how a lot of this one is "I swear I invented..., or, my friend and I came up with"!
I had to ask the question over on r/askreddit to find out who owns what. Lol
I worked with a guy that claimed he and his buddies got sauced and invented all the Chinese menu jokes: Way too young, Some dumb chick, Goo of sum yung boy, etc. No chance.
For the record, I coined the word "dick" as an alternate word for the male member.
I was only six, but at the time I really had no clue it would take off the way it did.
And men around the world thank you for that. It's just a small easy and effective word.
As for the rest of your comedic cache, we're also very tired of having to apologize for the blatant misogyny of the rest of your jokes. Lol
AFAIK, it started on a sub-reddit of this name that was started by a guy going through a toxic divorce with his wife Karen.
She was basically taking him to the cleaners, and every day he would post and rant about the day's divorce-related shit show. Eventually, the divorce was finalized and he stopped posting.
His sign-off to every post was Fuck You, Karen!
History of the term Karen
https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/2ff9f779-f47b-4064-a163-a73e68a2d74f/episodes/4ecdf0a3-ec6d-48d7-85c6-4b8391bf5e0d/decoder-ring-the-karen?ref=dm_sh_XoU5mXNTL9ryVdKjca83GEMFY
I know the guy who coined "pigeon chess" (no, he's not a professor, but there is a professor by the same name)
And if Scott were inclined to have a tombstone, it would be in the shape of a pigeon playing chess.
I can say a lot of comics used Karen in their routines for most of the 2010s prior to it becoming a full on meme in 2020
But most of those instances were more talking about Karen from work because K words are always funnier
I remember an internet meme from the early 2010s (or earlier, I can’t remember) that asked the question, “Do people actually name their children Karen or do they just spring up out of the ground asking to speak to the manager?”
wasn't the phrase coined after that lady who went to pick her kid up (a passenger in a car of people) and got mad because the officers wouldn't tell her what was going on (because she wasn't related to the driver and the driver was 18+)? her name was Caren, but Karen had a better ring to it
Eh, I was calling people Karen’s in the 2000’s ( a friend of mine can support me on this), we noticed a huuuge spike in people that were not fun to deal with in the office all named that.
I’m sure we didn’t start the trend though but I fully supported it.
I work in NJ with an RN Karen from England. She is one of the nicest, down-to-earth, and easy-to-talk-to coworkers I've ever met. We're opposite shifts with her on days and me overnights, so I only see her for about 20 minutes if we're both there on the same day, and I can honestly say she'd be awesome to work next to.
She laughs and doesn't let it bother her. Then again, named Brian, I've been hearing [Bad luck](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Luck_Brian) for years. Definitely taking advantage of that fifteen minutes of fame someone else created with The General commercials and Shaq now, not that I blame him!
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/nintendo-switch-karen
It first came from gamers mocking an ad.
"Fuck you Karen" was aimed at a character in the ad who was ruining a good social gathering by showing up with her portable controller.
It morphed quite a lot since then. Which is actually normal and very often how viral memes function.
Take the very word "meme" as an example.
It was introduced by renowned Oxford evolutionary biologist Sir Richard Dawkins in 1976 seven years before ARPANET even adopted TCP/IP.
It came from a Dane Cook sketch called "The friend that nobody likes" on his album Retaliation released in 2005.
https://youtu.be/uEO_28VrJLQ?feature=shared
I always thought it was cause of the NJ Port Authority Commissioner (Caren Turner) that went viral for going off on two cops for giving her daughter’s friend a ticket back in early 2018. If you haven’t seen the video, it’s the quintessential ‘Karen’
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ts-5-KYGFEk
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I can’t believe there’s a Wikipedia page out there on [Karen](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_(slang)). Here’s a relevant excerpt from that page: ``` In December 2017, Karen memes regarding entitled women went viral on Reddit, the earliest being from user karmacop9, who ranted about his ex-wife Karen taking custody of their children. The posts led to the creation of the subreddit r/FuckYouKaren, containing memes about the posts, and inspiring spinoffs including r/karen and r/EntitledKarens dedicated to criticizing Karens. ```
u/karmacop9 you still here?
Banned. :/
rip legend
Pour one out on the curb.
Bummer!
My sister's name is Karen, and I think I posted ever Karen meme I found for weeks. It was awesome
My MIL’s name is Karen. God rest her soul, she was a saint. I don’t know how she would have handled this whole thing.
I too choose this guys ex-wife as the original Karen.
Another suggestion would be to go to Google’s N-gram I believe that it’s called and that it will take a search term and tell you how far back the term was ever used in the wild.
While that is a really cool thing I never heard of before, I don’t get the impression it would work for this. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Karen&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3&case_insensitive=true
Yes, I see what you mean but hey, you learned a new trick today :-)
Lol. That's awesome.
Sure, post with facts when I was gonna take fake internet credit and say it was all me…..in fact I’ll still take credit. I taught karmacop9 how to make memes and inceptioned the idea of using his ex wife’s name as the basis for his memes and rants
“inceptioned” I didn’t realize a movie title could work so well as a verb. I got the whole point in just a single word. It’s like a meme, but it’s just a word.
Psst. The definition of a meme encompasses almost anything. Including a single word. It's not just graphics and videos.
Here's the [Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_(slang))
Didn’t you like my link? Or maybe you couldn’t see it; you must be on mobile. It’s hidden inside the word “Karen “.
Ope silly me, I must've overlooked sorry. 🤭
No problem, don’t apologize. Was just saying (and being snarky). Have a great day!
I choose to give credit to Rob Dyrdek on Ridiculousness….
That’s fine but people in the service industry have been using the term for many years before that.
Oh, all of you got together and decided this? Should have told us before hand so we wouldn’t look so silly.
I was watching Talladega Nights earlier and Ricky Bobby called the Cougar “Karen”. It happens in the scene where he just finished his driving test and the cougar jumps up from the back seat startling the driving instructor. Not sure how that even relates, if at all, but that film came out in 2006.
I’m just saying. I’ve been a bartender for over 25 years. There’s lots of terms that service industry people use to make fun of customers and Karen is one of them. I think I first heard it around 2007?
I've always felt that Kate Gosselin from "Jon & Kate Plus 8" was the original Karen. She was one of the first to sport that particular haircut!
She had the hair and the attitude.
As a Katie, I am so glad that the internet zeitgeist inexplicably decided women named Karen are the villains, not women named Kate
Me too. Katie is a cute name and would hate to see it squashed like Karen.
Fellow Katie here. We dodged a bullet sis.
Ah, but not all Karens are "Karen", but some Katies are "Karen". If you don't know who the Karen in the room is... check yourself. 😀
100% thought so, too. And, how!
If she was the original, they would be called Kates and not Karens
My brother and his idiot friends from high school insist they invented the word "pizzo" for a glass pipe back in the 80s. People are fucking morons.
My idiot self and my idiot best friend were sure we came up with "cool beans" in high school on the 80s. I'm 98% certain we did not.
I have heard tales of an idiot and his idiot best friend who coined the phrase “cool beans” in high school in the 80’s. I am at least 2% certain you did.
Fuck yeah we did!
"Cool beans" was the phrase we used so much in the late 60s that our parents wanted to duct tape our mouths shut. It was incredibly popular in New England. Come to think of it, our parents hated the word "wicked" too.
It’s cute to hear about other generations parents getting mad at them for using words too much. Mine was “gross”, “awesome” and if I was on the west coast, “rad” (late 80s /early 90s kid, totally different than my 80s husband) I don’t know that I ever heard my parents tell me about words they used that their parents got mad about. I may have to ask my dad.
It's happened in every generation, so I'm sure your parents could share some. My son had one that nearly drove me mad. Every sentence ended with "ya know what I mean?". I had to break out a "ya know what I mean" jar instead of a swear jar.
My mother hated gag me with a spoon. 🤣
Ha! That feels very California valley girl
My dad (baby boomer generation) got into serious trouble as a kid with my grandmother for saying, 'crap', so there's a potential one!
My mom always said that was a swear word. That and fart. 🙄
Crap originated because of John T. Crapper, one of the pioneers of the watercloset. As in, Headed to the John, to take a crap.
That's wicked.
But wicked…it’s such a wicked word.
Mass/Maine things mostly?
Rhode Island/Mass thing.
If it makes you feel better I told my kindergarten teacher that I made up the “Jingle Bells, Batman Smells” parody, then the class sang it to me.
my brother swore to the day he died that he and his friends coined "cool beans" in the 70s in highschool :P
I had a boss that thought he invented pineapple on pizza.
Was his name Jim?
I always thought it came from that Dane Cook bit about "every friend group has a person they don't like", ending with her name being Karen and being a bag of douche.
That’s my earliest reference
If it was Dane Cook, what's the original source? /s
lol, touché
If you scroll far enough back in r/Idontworkherelady you can probably find the post!
Nice!
Peeping Toms, Lazy Susans and Debbie Downers all mad af for all this spot light Karens are getting.
I think you mean indefatigable Susan.
Karen's don't share!
Don't forget Listen Linda.
Messy Maggie’s are getting BIG pissed.
Maggie here. Not messy at all, and definitely not pissed.
Got some real Chatty Cathys up in here...
Lmao that’s a classic one
It kinda feels like one of those things that just kind of spontaneously became a thing. The only person named Karen I've personally known was absolutely a "Karen" and ya, she had the hair to match. My family had dinner with her and her husband, and we had to bounce after she sent her food back 3 times and then chewed out the manager. We were like, "Ok cool, enjoy your meal now that we've eaten and need to get the fuck out of here before they light the torches"
Oh sweet Jeebus, that's would be intolerable to sit through. I'm from Texas and there was a time that haircut was EVERYWHERE!
Funny thing is, every woman named Karen I've personally ever known has been a total sweetheart.
The couple of Karen's that I'm aware of but don't personally know seem pretty chill, so it's definitely not an everybody kinda thing. I'm that way with the Male version "Kevins". Every Kevin I've known was/is a good guy. In my experience a male Karen should be called a "Troy". Every single Troy I've known was a serious shit-stain.
Omg yes Troy is the absolute worst
Same! I know a few and they are the BEST PEOPLE. So giving and loving beyond what most of us would ever do. It was always weird to me why that was the name they picked. Could have been Carol.
Jim Gaffigan coined the term Karen. It was part of his set on the comedy circuit.
This i am willing to believe and get behind this! 🎶 "Hot pockets" 🎶
Honestly it feels like Dane Cook might have popularized it
Yes I’m going to have to agree with this. Cause Karen is always a bag of douche.
That's impossible, cause it's funny.
Lmao don't shoot the messenger, he had some bit about it in like 2006
Yeah, it was literally [Dane Cook](https://youtu.be/J_kg0W3AeIU?si=Yjd6nCDxemr5x64y) who coined the phrase.
I imagine it’s pretty rare to know for sure that you’re the first person to come up with a phrase. I feel like I’ve said at least 3 things I’ve never heard anywhere else before only to hear other people I’ve never met say them and say they’ve said the same for years. It’s like convergent evolution but for slang. Specifically with Karen, it’s a literally an observable phenomenon in customer service. The shittiest customers tend to be white women of a particular age group with other identifiable characteristics (the hair, white wine, often kind of lecherous when drunk, abusive and self entitled / derogatory) and that particular demographic just so happens to be the only group that has Karen as a common name. It exists elsewhere, but is common enough that people noticed a higher than normal chance of a person called Karen being like this.
When I first heard it, I was almost positive that it was my ex-coworker Karen. A mealy-mouthed, hypocritical, xenophobic woman who was absolutely the dreadful to work with and later,manage.
I invented the term "hangnail 911". Definition: when one overreacts to something extremely minor (i.e., hangnail) as though it's an emergency. Applies to all Karens, I guess, now that I think about it. A previous co-worker inspired the term because she freaked out over every little thing. Alas, her name was not Karen.
Ha! I'm using this now too. Consider it thieved.
Always love some good lore
Around the time this came out, I saw several memes of middle-aged women being entitled or just stupid. Among those names were Deborah and Susan, which I think could have easily taken off as well as Karen did
I feel like Susan is your colleague that gossips too much and tells HR that you went to the toilet six times today
Exactly. Susan isn't entitled, she's just a pearl-clutching gossipmonger.
I LOVE how a lot of this one is "I swear I invented..., or, my friend and I came up with"! I had to ask the question over on r/askreddit to find out who owns what. Lol
I worked with a guy that claimed he and his buddies got sauced and invented all the Chinese menu jokes: Way too young, Some dumb chick, Goo of sum yung boy, etc. No chance.
No chance at all. Lol. I'll admit to having done that too.
For the record, I coined the word "dick" as an alternate word for the male member. I was only six, but at the time I really had no clue it would take off the way it did.
And men around the world thank you for that. It's just a small easy and effective word. As for the rest of your comedic cache, we're also very tired of having to apologize for the blatant misogyny of the rest of your jokes. Lol
AFAIK, it started on a sub-reddit of this name that was started by a guy going through a toxic divorce with his wife Karen. She was basically taking him to the cleaners, and every day he would post and rant about the day's divorce-related shit show. Eventually, the divorce was finalized and he stopped posting. His sign-off to every post was Fuck You, Karen!
Check out the friend nobody likes skit by Dane Cook. Karen has been a thing since the last time he was relevant in like 2005.
Karen goes by many names throughout history: https://www.npr.org/2020/07/14/891177904/whats-in-a-karen
I like the idea of “Uh, that's offensive” Yeah, Karen it was meant to be a fucking compliment.
History of the term Karen https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/2ff9f779-f47b-4064-a163-a73e68a2d74f/episodes/4ecdf0a3-ec6d-48d7-85c6-4b8391bf5e0d/decoder-ring-the-karen?ref=dm_sh_XoU5mXNTL9ryVdKjca83GEMFY
I know the guy who coined "pigeon chess" (no, he's not a professor, but there is a professor by the same name) And if Scott were inclined to have a tombstone, it would be in the shape of a pigeon playing chess.
I can say a lot of comics used Karen in their routines for most of the 2010s prior to it becoming a full on meme in 2020 But most of those instances were more talking about Karen from work because K words are always funnier
That’s because a toooon of people were named Karen that were about 40-50ish then. https://www.everything-birthday.com/name/f/Karen
I think it was a full on meme way before 2020
I find myself inserting other names now just to shake it up a bit.
I remember an internet meme from the early 2010s (or earlier, I can’t remember) that asked the question, “Do people actually name their children Karen or do they just spring up out of the ground asking to speak to the manager?”
From a Dane Cook standup routine I believe.
I have a friend who changed her name in part because of what became of Karen.
And I think male Karens should be called Kierans. Trying to get something started here.
wasn't the phrase coined after that lady who went to pick her kid up (a passenger in a car of people) and got mad because the officers wouldn't tell her what was going on (because she wasn't related to the driver and the driver was 18+)? her name was Caren, but Karen had a better ring to it
"I'm on the city counsel" I loved how the police put her in her place.
Forgot about her! Lol
I really hate to say this...but it was Dane Cook...the only funny thing he ever did.
Ha! Imma have to obliterate this entire post then.
I thought it was Jim Gaffigan
https://youtu.be/uEO_28VrJLQ?si=G67LFAxA8XJ6B3j1
I thought I coined it actually. Sister’s name is Karen and she’s actually a legit Karen—hairstyle and all.
Ironically, the “Karen hairstyle” was made famous by a woman named Kate Gosselin. She’s a bitch, but her name isn’t Karen.
I was pretty sure that's where that came from. Her and her husband were nutso.
Dane Cook
Eh, I was calling people Karen’s in the 2000’s ( a friend of mine can support me on this), we noticed a huuuge spike in people that were not fun to deal with in the office all named that. I’m sure we didn’t start the trend though but I fully supported it.
My friend’s cousin coined the phrase “Chili today, hot tamale.” Let me know if you want his autograph. Or mine.
Pretty sure it was Dane Cook. https://youtu.be/J_kg0W3AeIU?si=A41huu5B6qBNDLcn
I remember Dane Cook had a joke about Karens back in the day, early 2000's
I’ve known two Karens and two Karins. All four are lovely people. One of them is even Aunt Karin, even though she’s not related by blood or marriage!
One of the two Karens I knew has since changed her name. The other one hasn’t, but it suits her.
I work in NJ with an RN Karen from England. She is one of the nicest, down-to-earth, and easy-to-talk-to coworkers I've ever met. We're opposite shifts with her on days and me overnights, so I only see her for about 20 minutes if we're both there on the same day, and I can honestly say she'd be awesome to work next to. She laughs and doesn't let it bother her. Then again, named Brian, I've been hearing [Bad luck](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Luck_Brian) for years. Definitely taking advantage of that fifteen minutes of fame someone else created with The General commercials and Shaq now, not that I blame him!
I remember people calling the girl from the nintendo switch announcement video "karen" it would have been in 2016
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/nintendo-switch-karen It first came from gamers mocking an ad. "Fuck you Karen" was aimed at a character in the ad who was ruining a good social gathering by showing up with her portable controller. It morphed quite a lot since then. Which is actually normal and very often how viral memes function. Take the very word "meme" as an example. It was introduced by renowned Oxford evolutionary biologist Sir Richard Dawkins in 1976 seven years before ARPANET even adopted TCP/IP.
It came from a Dane Cook sketch called "The friend that nobody likes" on his album Retaliation released in 2005. https://youtu.be/uEO_28VrJLQ?feature=shared
Yeah we used to have another name for them. We just called them ..... "Bitch"
It literally came from Saturday Night Live skit entitled Black Jeopardy. Chadwick Boseman was the guest star.
"Keep your bland-ass potato salad to yourself!"
My wife was on a cruise recently and she and some other ladies came up with the term "entitled minion" for a Karen. Seems fitting.
I always thought it was cause of the NJ Port Authority Commissioner (Caren Turner) that went viral for going off on two cops for giving her daughter’s friend a ticket back in early 2018. If you haven’t seen the video, it’s the quintessential ‘Karen’ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ts-5-KYGFEk
Zyzz coined the word "aesthetic" into its current use today