About

Screaming Pacers Fan, sometimes referred to as Karen the Pacer Fan is an image macro series featuring a clip of an Indianapolis Pacers heckling the Chicago Bulls during the 1998 NBA playoffs. The documentary series The Last Dance featured the footage in May 2020 and some viewers used the image as an example of the Karen meme.

Origin

On May 17th, 2020, ESPN aired the ninth episode of The Last Dance, which contains footage from the 1998 playoffs series between the Bulls and the Pacers.^[1]

That day, Twitter user @AnthraxJones shared the clip from the episode of a female Pacers fan screaming. The post received more than 442,000 views in less than one week (shown below).

my god Sweet Dee pic.twitter.com/yvv9ERHnB2

— don’t trust the birds (@AnthraxJones) May 18, 2020

Spread

That night, others shared the video and added different captions to the clip. For example, Kentucky Sports Radio host Matt Jones mocked coronavirus quarantine protesters. He wrote, "I HAVE A RIGHT TO SHOP FOR MY HAIR PRODUCTS WITHOUT WEARING A MASK!!!" The post received more than 1,500 likes and 270 retweets in less than one week (shown below).

“I HAVE A RIGHT TO SHOP FOR MY HAIR PRODUCTS WITHOUT WEARING A MASK!!!” pic.twitter.com/7uIWWTsTJQ

— Matt Jones (@KySportsRadio) May 18, 2020

Over the eventing, people continued to post images, GIFs and memes of the fan. For example, Twitter^[2] user @BunkiePerkins tweeted an image with the caption "Karen Pacer" that received more than 1,300 likes in less than one (shown below, left). Twitter^[4] user @_Zeets tweeted the image with the caption "WEARING A MASK IS TAKING AWAY MY FREEDOM!!" The tweet received more than 2,100 likes and 530 retweets in less than one week (shown below, center). Throughout the evening, others posted similar jokes (examples below, right).

On May 18th, the woman featured in the episode and the meme appeared on WTHR for an interview (shown below). She also spoke with the Indianapolis Star^[3] about appearing in the game. She said, Before the game started, a national TV guy came up to us and said, 'Look, we're filming a lot of footage of Michael Jordan for a movie. And if we show you in any of the footage, would you sign a release?' We signed a release."

We felt it was our job to get into the heads of the visitors. You can’t do it today, because they’ll arrest you, but back then, it was OK to be feisty and yell at the players and the players would yell back at you. It was just a lot of fun.

Various Examples

When you have to wait more than 7 minutes for help at the Apple Store pic.twitter.com/Cy4zZZqfHr

— Pete Blackburn (@PeteBlackburn) May 18, 2020

When you’re tired of social distancing pic.twitter.com/paBYGsDVqD

— Andrew Hammond (@ahammTNT) May 18, 2020

Search Interest

External References