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About

Costco Tison Customer Removal Viral Video spread online in May 2020. The video features a Costco manager named Tison confronting a customer for not wearing a mask, despite the store's policy on social distancing and face coverings to reduce the risk of spreading the coronavirus. After the video went viral, many commended Tison for attempting to protect other customers from infection.

Origin

On May 17th, 2020, Redditor ^[1] HannibalK published the earliest available version of the video on the /r/ActualPublicFreakouts subreddit. The video features a masked manager confronting a customer who refuses to wear a mask. The customer recorded the video to show his "3,000 Instagram" followers. The manager responds to being recorded, "Hi everyone, I work for Costco and I'm asking this member to put on a mask because that is our company policy." The customer refused because he "woke up in a free country."

The manager tells the customer to "have a great day" and takes the customer's shopping cart of items. The manager tells the customer that he needs to leave, and the customer calls the manager a "pussy little bitch" and then calls others wearing masks "sheep."

The post received more than 35,000 points (82% upvoted) and 3,100 comments in less than one week (mirror below).

Spread

The following day, the customer posted a rebuttal video on Reddit's /r/ActualPublicFreakouts subreddit,^[2] where some refer to the incident as "The Trial of Cosco Kevin." They have since deleted their Reddit account. In the video, he says, "I've got every fucking right to not wear a mask anywhere because this isn't about wearing mask, this is about control. And I'm not the fucking sheep, y'all are the fucking sheep, every single one of you going along with what everybody else is saying." Within two days, the video received more than 15,000 views (shown below).

On May 18th, Twitter user @OnlyLVNV tweeted the video with the caption "Kevin and Karen get shopping cart taken away at #Costco." The tweet received more than 6.1 million views, 16,000 likes and 3,100 retweets in less than one week (shown below).

Kevin and Karen get shopping cart taken away at #Costco || ✌🏼 #wearethepeople #COVID19 #coronavirusuk #COVIDIDIOTS pic.twitter.com/LDeB1hDz9L

— ONLY iN LVNV ➐ (@OnlyInLVNV) May 18, 2020

On May 19th, the manager responded to the video on Twitter. They wrote,^[3] "People of Twitter thank you for all of the support 🙏I was just trying to protect our employees and our members. 😘 #Tison." The post received more than 53,000 likes and 3,400 retweets in less than two days (shown below, left).

The video went viral on Twitter, as did the hashtag ^[5] #CostCoTison trended on Twitter. Journalist Elon James White shared the video,^[4] receiving more than 146,000 likes and 22,000 retweets in less than 24 hours (shown below, right).

Search Interest

Not available.

External References