About

Karen is a slang term used as an antagonistic female character in memes. "Karen" is generally characterized as an irritating, entitled woman, sometimes as an ex-wife who took custody of "the kids."

Origin

While it's unclear where exactly "Karen" began seeing use as a pejorative character, it perhaps started with the Oh My God, Karen, You Can’t Just Ask Someone Why They're White meme from Mean Girls.

Spread

One of the earliest widespread examples was Nintendo Switch Karen. On October 20th, 2016, Nintendo released the first trailer for the Nintendo Switch (shown below).

In the trailer, a woman brings the Switch to a rooftop party. That day, Tumblr user joematar posted a joke about the woman arriving at the party with the caption “Oh shit, Karen brought her stupid Nintendo thing to the party again. We’re DRINKING, Karen. We’re having CONVERSATIONS.” As of December 27th, 2017, the post has over 23,000 notes (shown below).

On December 7th, 2017, the subreddit /r/FuckYouKaren^[1] was created, and has over 57,000 subscribers as of December 27th, 2018. The subreddit is devoted to mocking the character in jokes that characterize "Karen" as annoying. Many jokes revolve around the character having a specific style of haircut indicating her character (examples shown below).

On March 18th, 2018, Urban Dictionary user Cody Kolodziejzyk posted a definition of "Karen" as an annoying middle-aged white woman.^[2]

In late 2018, a series of jokes spread in which "Karen" is an ex-wife had taken the kids in a custody battle, many of which appear in the She Took the Fucking Kids meme. On December 24th, 2018, Redditor ashleyallday^[3] posted an inquiry to /r/OutOfTheLoop about the jokes, pointing to two examples (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References