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About

Space Karen is a pejorative nickname for Tesla founder Elon Musk, which combines the name of Musk's private space exploration company Space X with Karen, a meme character representing an antagonistic, overly entitled woman. The nickname is often associated with a photoshopped image of Musk superimposed with a "Speak to the Manager" haircut. In November 2020, Space Karen trended on Twitter after a user called Musk the nickname in response to his tweet questioning the validity of a coronavirus rapid antigen test.

Origin

On May 11th, 2020, in response to a tweet by Musk, Twitter^[8] user @trekonomics tweeted, "He thinks he's Rosa Parks but he's just Space Karen" (shown below). The tweet was later deleted.

That week, in response to a tweet by comedian Sarah Cooper, Twitter^[9] user @geesubay responded to the question "Ok I’ll bite, what is elon musk," with "Somebody said Elon Musk is SPACE KAREN and I died." The tweet received more than 19,000 likes and 2,900 retweets in less than one year (shown below, left). Twitter^[10] user @Lynchian_Dream responded, with an image edit Elon Musk, placing a Speak to the Manager Haircut on his head. The post received more than 2,200 likes and 300 retweets in less than one year (shown below, right).

Spread

On May 14th, 2020, Redditor Otter_Apocalypse posted the image edit in the /r/FuckYouKaren^[11] subreddit. The post received more than 2,500 points (92% upvoted) and 100 comments in less than 24 hours. That month, on May 24th, Redditor highpad shared the image in the /r/TIHI^[12] subreddit, where it received more than 9,000 points (94% upvoted).

On November 12th, 2020, Elon Musk tweeted,^[1] "Something extremely bogus is going on. Was tested for covid four times today. Two tests came back negative, two came back positive. Same machine, same test, same nurse. Rapid antigen test from BD." The tweet received more than 477,000 likes and 160,000 retweets in less that one week (shown below, left). Two days later, Twitter^[2] user @emmabell42 tweeted, "Rapid antigen tests trade sensitivity for speed. They return a result in <30 minutes, but can only detect COVID-19 when you're absolutely riddled with it. What's bogus is that Space Karen didn't read up on the test before complaining to his millions of followers." The tweet received more than 52,000 likes and 12,000 retweets in less than two days (shown below, right).

Over the next few days, people continued to joke about the nickname. Twitter^[3] user @danhett tweeted a photograph of Elon Musk that has been edited to include a Speak to the Manager Haircut. The tweet received more than 9,500 likes and 1,500 retweets in less than 24 hours (shown below).

Several media outlets reported on the meme, including Newsweek,^[4] TMZ,^[5] NME.^[6] the Independent^[7] and more.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References