Tumblr post from 21 October 2016 featuring an early slang use of “Karen.” Image of a woman bringing a video game console to a party.
16 May 2020
The name Karen has become a byword for a middle-aged, obnoxious woman. Karen was a nominee for the American Dialect Society’s 2019 Word of the Year, although it did not win. The society defined Karen as the “stereotype of a complaining, self-important white woman, typically a member of Generation X.” Why Karen, out of all possible names, was chosen for this honor is something of mystery. This use of the name most likely does not have a single origin incident or inspiration but is rather the result of a confluence of a number of trends.
Finding antedates for a particular context for a common name like Karen is maddeningly difficult, and it’s likely there are earlier examples out there, waiting to be found. But here are the earliest ones I’m aware of.
In 2005, comedian Dane Cook released his album Retaliation that included the routine “The Friend that Nobody Likes,” which has the lines:
Every group has a Karen and she is always a bag of douche. And when she's not around, you just look at each other and say, "God, Karen, she's such a douchebag!"
This is the earliest use of Karen as a generic name for an obnoxious woman that I know of, and the album was immensely popular, debuting at #4 on the Billboard 200 and selling over 1.3 million copies. It appears too early, however, to be a plausible direct inspiration for the meme, which did not start trending until 2016, over ten years later.
But on 20 October 2016 Nintendo released a trailer for its Switch gaming system that featured a woman bringing a Nintendo Switch to a rooftop party. The next day, a certain Joematar posted a screenshot on Tumblr from the trailer with the subtitle:
Oh shit, Karen brought her stupid Nintendo thing to the party again. We’re DRINKING, Karen. We’re having CONVERSATIONS.
This Tumblr post is the first known instance of the Karen meme proper. A year later, on 7 December 2017, the subreddit /r/FuckYouKaren was launched.
And in March 2018, two definitions for Karen were posted to Urbandictionary.com. The first on 13 March 2018:
typically never a name given to a baby but somehow karen always turns up asking to see the manager
Karen "i would like to speak to the manager"
manager "is your name karen"
#karen
And the second a few days later on 18 March 2018:
44. mother of three. blonde. owns a volvo. annoying as hell. wears acrylics 24/7. currently at your workplace speaking to your manager.
watch out for fkn karen. MID AGED WHITE WOMEN WITH BOB CUTS ARE NOT TO BE SPOKEN TO IN ANY SORT OF TONE.
#mom #manage #store #moms #bitch
And on 29 May 2018 Karen hit mainstream media when comedian Franchesca Ransey wrote this on CNN Commentary:
Before I knew it, the comments started filling up with names I'd never seen before. I thought what I'd posted was pretty tame, but the whole conversation spiraled, becoming heated, fast. [...] Then someone named "Karen" (it's *always* a Karen) chimed in with, "Are you really comparing Allison to a slut shamer? WOW."
But why, of all the names, was Karen chosen for this honor? It’s most likely a combination of a number of factors.
First, Karen is a name that is identifiably common among women of a certain age. According to the Social Security Administration, the name Karen reached a peak in popularity in the years 1958–60, when it was the fourth most popular name for girls born in the United States during those years. It remained among the top ten most popular female names until 1969, and among the top one hundred until 1987. So, if, in 2016, one were to pick a generic name for a middle-aged woman, Karen would be among the top contenders.
Second, there is an old comedy truism, going back to Vaudeville, that words with the phoneme /k/ in them are inherently funny. Neil Simon’s 1972 play The Sunshine Boys has these lines, spoken by an aging comedian:
Alka Seltzer is funny. You say “Alka Seltzer” you get a laugh ... Words with “k” in them are funny. Casey Stengel, that's a funny name. Robert Taylor is not funny. Cupcake is funny. Tomato is not funny. Cookie is funny. Cucumber is funny. Car keys. Cleveland ... Cleveland is funny. Maryland is not funny. Then, there's chicken. Chicken is funny. Pickle is funny. Cab is funny. Cockroach is funny—not if you get 'em, only if you say 'em.
So, if the Vaudeville axiom holds true, people who were aiming for humor about a middle-aged woman, they would naturally gravitate toward the name Karen.
There are also several Karens in popular films that may have influenced the choice of the name. One is the character of Karen Hill, played by Lorraine Bracco, in Martin Scorcese’s 1990 Goodfellas, which features her husband, played by Ray Liotta asking her, after she has flushed a bag of heroin down the toilet during a police raid:
Why did you do that Karen?!
Another suggestion it that it was inspired by the character of Karen Smith, played by Amanda Seyfried, in the 2004 film Mean Girls, which featured the line:
Oh my God, Karen! You can’t just ask someone why they're white.
This line from Mean Girls inspired its own meme in 2010.
While these films, along with the Dane Cook comedy routine, appeared well before the rise of the Karen meme, their overwhelming and continuing popularity and familiarity may have subconsciously brought the name to the fore. The Dane Cook example, in particular, may be an early outlier that didn’t catch on in the public consciousness and become a meme.
Sources:
American Dialect Society. “2019 Word of the Year” (press release). 3 January 2020.
“FuckYouKaren.” Reddit.
Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2020, s.v. Karen n.
Know Your Meme, 30 April 2020, s.v. Karen.
Ramsey, Franchesca, “Comedian: When S*** Gets Real, Take It Offline.” CNN Commentary, 29 May 2018. ProQuest: U.S. Newsstream.
Social Security Administration. “Get Ready for Baby.” Accessed 15 May 2020.
Urbandictionary.com, 2020, s.v. Karen.