The ‘Karen’ meme is a well-known phenomenon, the word thrown around on various social media platforms. Karen is a term used to describe exclusively problematic, middle-aged, white women. These women are usually seen acting hysterical over the tiniest inconveniences, or in terms of internet slang, “out of pocket.” A lot of ‘Karen’ behavior tends to be absurdly racist, homophobic, etcetera.
Articles try to pinpoint Karen’s origin to Dane Cook, who famously mentioned the name during his 2007 stand-up comedy routine ‘The Friend Nobody Likes.’ In his routine, he made an observation that within each friend group there is at least one friend that absolutely no one likes. Cook pointed out that in a majority of female friend groups, the unwanted person is dictated to be a ‘Karen,’ why this specific name was used is still unknown.
Richard Dawkins was the first to coin the term ‘meme’ in 1976. Dawkins described a meme as a “unit of culture,” and these units could be ‘passed on’ or imitated. In today’s culture, we describe and determine memes as spreadable media. The internet sees memes as a communication heritage and is easily distributed throughout social media. Dawkins’ definition of a meme is outdated and doesn’t leave room for growth as technology evolves. Many see memes as vernacular, the word ‘meme’ is now being applied to describe not just photos but videos and jokes as well. And while an internet meme can spread in its original form, often it’s rebranded and reimagined.
Dane Cook’s original routine had a different meaning of the word ‘Karen’ to what society knows. Karen was a popular, older name that Cook used as a placeholder to describe a ‘bad friend.’ Now, the name is used to describe bigoted, entitled, and condescending white women. Karen has become so personified that a certain look is attached to the name, imagining women who are ‘Karen,’ to have a certain side-swept, bleach-blonde, haircut.
Since the spread of the Karen meme, the origin of the original seems irrelevant and pointless. What once was a harmless joke has now become an embodied character trait. The meme has been imitated, rebranded, and redone throughout the years and Cook’s joke no longer has a place within the Karen verse.
In Ryan Milner’s World Made Meme, he describes memes as “complicated narrow notions,” that “circulate without signature or citation.” Milner describes this as ‘memetic media,’ due to their unique atonement for multimodality, reappropriation, resonance, collectivism, and spreadability.
The above descriptions of memetic media are key to why Milner states that memes circulate without any specific signature or citation to their original owner and creator needing to be known.
Multimodality is one of the backbones of memetic media. It becomes easier to create and circulate new types of images, jokes, and videos because of how vast the internet is. Communication barriers are almost non-existent, and almost anything niche can be explained by broader groups or individuals. While it can produce original content, it’s more likely for a new meme to be reappropriated from older ones. The Karen meme has expanded to calling women who exhibit opposite characteristics of a Karen, ‘Sherry’ or another ‘cooler’ name. These women usually hold opposite ideals and dress differently than their Karen counterparts. It has even evolved to calling bigoted and ignorant men ‘Bills,’ or ‘Bobs.’ Both these new variations can be seen to be taken from the Karen model, but the credit is never given back to it and has separated itself from the so-called Karen verse.
To pinpoint the Karens, Sherry’s, Bob’s, and Bills of the world back to Dane Cook would look ridiculous because Cook’s Karen is not at all what the internet knows Karen to be. Cook’s interpretation is imaginative, while the rest of the world has a real grasp on who these fictional Karens are.
Reappropriation can be seen in the above examples, and how the meme is changed to fit other stereotypes for ‘cooler’ women and equally discriminatory men. New and old memes of the same subject tend to blur together. Calling someone a Karen due to their racism is just the same as calling someone a Karen for not following COVID-19 restrictions, and due to the popular circulation of both modes at the same time (due to the Black Lives Matter movement gaining traction and the COVID-19 pandemic,) no one can say which ‘type’ of Karen was there first.
Resonance, collectivism, and their spreadability are also important to mention when discussing disregarding a meme’s origin. Many people don’t have any connection to Cook, even beloved stand-up comedy lovers like myself, don’t know who he is or even that he was one of the first people to properly coin the use of the word ‘Karen,’ in a memetic context. What individuals connect Karen to now are the videos that circulate on TikTok of white women acting hysterical over the tiniest things, like being asked to put on a mask, having a person of color blocking their car in, and other tiny situations that would never deserve such a strong physical reaction.
The important thing to remember about collectivism is that it is highly dependent on individual expression and relies on social experience. Different social media sites have different norms, as do different social circles. Most individuals do not experience the Karen meme through the lens of Dane Cook, they experience it through the reappropriation and transformation of the meme. It’s more likely for an individual to see a video titled ‘Karen Goes Crazy at a Supermarket,” versus Cook’s comedy routine, especially because there’s been discussion about stand-up comedy dying due to platforms such as TikTok and how short-form video formats are decreasing attention spans along with increasing the use of. The spread and circulation of memes through mass online networks contribute to and come across the same factors as collectivism. People spread spreadable content, but that does not make all content spreadable.
In Dawkins’s original meaning of a meme, he explains in simple terms that an ‘internet meme’ is simply a ‘recreation’ of an original idea that can then be changed by ‘human creativity.’ Dawkins’ meaning of what a meme is has vastly changed over time, although the meaning appropriated by the internet is not too far off the original. Part of the reason that the Karen meme is entertaining and popular is that everyone has encountered a Karen or Karen-like figure before the exact phenomenon was named. People were able to relate to what Karen represented due to their personal experiences. When Karen was given a permanent structure and visual, it made their identity more tangible.
In an interview with ET Canada, Dane Cook was asked about ‘who created Karen.’ Cook said that while he does take some credit for the origin, he said that his Karen joke was not necessarily what ‘we see today,’ regarding the meme. To him, the name was associated with people who were ‘off-putting,’ but never saw it in the context of today’s social climate.
A modern connection can also go to the 2004 film Mean Girls, where a character named Karen asks, “so if you’re from Africa, why are you white,” and the response is “oh my God Karen, you can’t just ask people why they’re white.” Even though Cook would be the most likely person to be given ‘credit,’ many connect the name to the Mean Girls character due to the popularity of the film. Some more modern references to the Karen meme can come from the 2016 “Antisocial Karen” Nintendo Meme and an SNL Karen skit from 2018.
The humor stems from discordance, from the original message being taken out of context and turned into something else entirely. Memes are made to be a cultural transmission. An important rule of thumb is what can be copied will be copied and so on, but what makes memes worth transforming is their meaning, and as seen before, meanings can be adjusted or changed completely.
As memes are shared, they throw away the original context of creation and authorship. When authorship is taken away, along with the original intention, memes become the property of popular social and online culture. Memes tend to take on a life of their own, which is why some can then become hate symbols, such as the Pepe meme. They have evolved from harmless entertainment to having a real impact on society.
The current political climate has also drastically changed what we consider to be a ‘Karen.’ Dane Cook referenced this in his interview that the reason he only takes some credit was due to how Karen became such a symbol to call out racist white women. Especially in 2020 when the Karen meme has become a popular symbol to challenge the racially charged climate and debate over human rights. In 2020, the national conversation of the Black Lives Matter movement changed what many people meant by calling someone a Karen. As protests raged on, so did the evolution of who Karen was and the association the word now has with white supremacy and racism. Even in 2023, this meaning of Karen is still the most relevant one.
The Karen meme has shifted from its original use, poking fun at the unlikable person in each friend group, and has become categorized as a whole subculture of mainly white women. Even if the origin could be successfully tied down, it would be pointless since the original Karen joke and the Karen mean we know today are two completely different entities. Even mainstream articles who write about this particular meme state that the origin is unknown and while that is not necessarily true, it’s also not untrue. Many don’t know the origin or think it’s relative because of how the Karen meme has evolved. Why would anyone search for the origin of an image or video when it would give no clarity or context to how we see images and videos in today’s world?
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