Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - The Surprising History of 'Karens'

Episode Date: February 12, 2024

What do Alexa, Adolf and Karen have in common?They're all names that have plummeted in popularity.The most recent, Karen, is largely due to the meme-powered phenomenon of calling out white privilege by calling someone a 'Karen'.What is the history of calling out privilege in this way? Is this a force for good, or has it become sexist?Today Kate is joined by Senior Lecturer of Language and Linguistics at Leeds Trinity University, Linda Walz, who has researched this social phenomenon in great depth. This episode was edited and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code BETWIXT - sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe.You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Oh, my lovely betwixters, how nice to see you here once again. But before we can proceed with the show to make sure that everybody is safe and everybody knows exactly what's going on here, I have to give you the fair do's warning and here it is. This is an adult podcast broken by adults to other adults about adulty things and an adulty way covering a range of adult subjects and you should be an adult too.

And if you can't tick every single one of those boxes, then off with you. Be off. Don't be hanging around here, writing us nasty emails, asking for the manager, being a right, Karen, because fair-doos, you have been warned. Certain names do come and go in our lives, right? And many things can affect their popularity. Nigel, for example. Nigel has almost vanished as a name here in Britain, and come to think of it, I don't think I've ever met a baby called Nigel. And of course, shout out to all the Nigel's. there, stay strong. Other names fall out of favour by association. I mean, nobody, nobody would name their child adult. Would they? And if they did, the authorities might have to intervene. We've also seen a drop in the popularity of the name Alexa. In fact, it has suffered one of the

sharpest declines of any popular name in recent years after Amazon released their voice assistant. And as for Karen, well, in recent years, the name has become a widespread slang typically meaning an irate and entitled middle-class white woman. It's also synonymous with a certain type of hairstyle now. There's also a Karen diner, and women have made headline news all around the world after being called out as quote-unquote Karen's. Today, we are looking into the surprisingly long history of Karen.

We'll find out about its first uses and how the name came to be connected to class, race, and science. sex. What do you look for in a man? Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect copies of whatever my voice needs by just turning it up and pushing the funny. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference.

Goodness, I'm beautiful done. Goodness has nothing to do with it, Derry. Oh, and welcome back to Betwixt the Shades, the History of Sex Scandal and Society. With me, K. Lister. In 1965, the name Karen was the third most popular name in America. The third most popular. Fast forward 60 years, and the name Karen is now a meme or a byword for somebody, usually a white middle-aged woman who is expressing their privilege to others

often in an outspoken, wrong way. And it often has a racial element to it as well. A classic example of that came in 2020, when a white woman. woman was walking her dog in New York and called the police accusing a black man of harassment. The man himself was simply birdwatching. The incident was videoed by the man's sister and became a national talking point, with the woman being referred to as a Central Park Karen. What's the history of calling out privilege in this way? Is this labeling a tool for good? Or has it evolved into something more pernicious towards women? Is there a male equivalent? And of course,

What about people that are called Karen today? How are they coping with all of this? It doesn't seem fair, does it? That their name has now become a byword for all of these things and they're just walking around being called Karen. How are they getting on? Well, joining me today is Senior Lecturer of Language and Linguistics at Leeds Trinity University, Linda Wals,

who has researched this social phenomenon in great depth. I am ready to find out about this if you are the Twixters. Hello and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Linda Walsh. How are you doing? And very well and thank you for having me on your podcast. There's no one else I'd rather be talking to about this because your research is so fascinating. You're a linguist and you are studying Harrens. That's incredible. Thank you. Yeah, it is quite a fascinating topic, I have to say. I do enjoy looking into it. How did you get started with this? Because the Karen phenomenon, I suppose, that's quite recent, but what was it that led you to studying this particular phenomenon, I suppose we'd call it,

of the Karen, of what Karen's are? So this is a bit of a background to it, really. So this is a joint research project that I'm doing with two colleagues, Jack Joyce and Natalie Flint. And we are really interested in just generally how people make sense of who they are. are, if you want to put it really broadly. So how we use language to make sense of the social world, of who we are to each other, and what's acceptable norms in society, and how we police those, and how we sort of maybe challenged them as well. So we do look a lot at categorization, you know, how we categorize people as certain types of people and talk about the kinds of things they do. And in that process, really, we started off looking at a different kind of categorization

which is something that was around a lot in sort of 2019, OK Boomer, which you may have come across. Yeah. So there was a brief time where the internet was full of OK Boomer, put down if you want, yeah. So where basically people were using this as a way of shutting somebody down or somebody of a certain middle age, so we say, background says something that you don't agree with, you can go,

okay, boomer, there, there, you know, I don't agree with you. It's quite a handy way of shutting down an argument or not in engaging with an argument. And we thought it's really interesting how it's tied to age, you know, it's a generational thing, to be able to say, boomer, so people of the boomer generation,

who would now be sort of in the 60s or 70s and how that's used. And it used, you know, he got quite a lot of media attention as well because it was used in part, as well. So a young politician used it to shut down a heckler while she was talking about climate change. And so it was really a very interesting phenomenon. And we thought, oh, let's, let's explore a bit more what's going on there. But while we were in the process of doing that,

the thing happened that happens a lot, I guess, with online social media is that things move on. And suddenly it died down almost as quickly as it came about, or at least it wasn't as viral anymore as it had been. And we felt we were lagging a bit behind with. that. So we couldn't really capture this phenomenon as well as we wanted by sort of early 2020. But instead, and that's actually something I was talking to my students about what's going on on social media at the time, instead what became really popular was the Karen meme and the current categorization. So we basically jumped chip and said, actually, this is what's currently really fascinating and really going on. So let's have a look at what's happening there because

it's not unrelated, I would say, to what's going on with the OK boom. So it's a similar kind of a categorization to potentially shut down an argument or to label somebody in a certain way. So we we changed tack and said, actually, let's dig a bit further into what's going on there. The OK Boomer thing, it is, or it was, it's remarkably effective at shutting down a conversation in just two words, just because what you've done is you've called somebody old, basically. Yeah. And the OK bit is kind of it's almost like.

oh, all right, Grandpa, you're fucking on one again. It's all of that in just those two words of just shutting. Exactly. It was very, very powerful that one. And Karen is doing the same thing. The moment it's deployed, it's like a bomb goes off. Yeah, absolutely. No one wants to be a Karen.

It's these categorizations. No, exactly. It's like you don't want to be called OK boomer either. You don't want to be shut down like that. So it's not a positive thing. I think that's what they've got in common. Even though they do slightly different things, you're right, they're certainly sort of a bomb that you can drop into a conversation,

and they have a huge impact. And they're really neat in how they operate in that. It's just, as you say, it's one word, two words, and it contains, it packages so much, and that's what we're interested in. How does that work? How can we just drop this one categorization like Karen into a conversation, and there's so much behind it.

It's got a huge weight that you can unpack it. look into what it does. So that's what we were fascinated by. So I suppose we'll start because we all think we know what we mean by it. But when you're talking about a Karen, what is it that you, and we'll get to the actual Karen, the real people whose real name is Karen and what they're currently dealing with at the moment for God's sake. But for you, what does that encompass? What does it mean when someone's being called a Karen? So a Karen, typically how it's used online at the moment, is usually the kind of person who wants to talk to a manager. She's usually a middle-aged, middle-class, white woman who

is showing some kind of entitled behaviour who's kicking up a fuss, who's unhappy about something and is usually complaining or, you know, calling an authority like wanting to speak to a manager, sometimes wanting to call the police or in fact calling the police on people who in her view are not behaving properly or are doing something that she doesn't like. And she's basically, you know, trying to get her way in a way. So that's, that's a Karen. It's somebody who's entitled, who's being difficult, who's complaining, who's antagonistic. And very often, and I think that's quite important, it's a white woman. So there's also this whole racial dimension to it. And I think certainly that's also where it all took off online. Well, I'm going to ask you, where did

this start from. Because I have no doubt, and we'll talk about longer history in a minute, that there have always been Karen's walking amongst us, I'm sure. But what are the early uses of it in the online space and who is it that they're referring to there? Has it always been a woman that wanted to speak to the manager or did it start off as something else? Yes, it's really interesting if you try and look a bit into the history and I have to say there are other people who've researched this in more depth than what we are currently looking at in terms of the present use. So this goes back. quite a while, probably sort of about 20 years when, well, it's actually a bit of,

it's a bit disputed in terms of where it started. And it's always hard to pin down a phenomenon like that to its earliest usages. So, for example, in the film Mean Girls, there is a Karen, who is one of these, you know, in this girlfriend, Cleek, there's Karen Smith, who's being often, I guess, quite a difficult woman. So it may well have originated there. then a year later there was Dane Cook, the stand-up comedian who was talking about how there is always one person in a friendship group that actually nobody likes. And he was sort of talking about, you know, how there's always this one friend, nobody likes.

And if you don't know who it is, then maybe it's you. And so this is the Karen, right. So he called her Karen, the Karen that no one likes. So potentially it may have started there as well. There's also then on Reddit, there's a subreddit, so like a discussion forum or a community called Fuck You, Karen, where somebody wrote about his ex-wife and basically complained about her treatment of him and I think getting in custody of the kids. And sort of that Fuck-U sub-Read is actually still around today quite a lot later. I think that started in 2017, but that's still around.

It's currently got about a million members, I think it's got. So, you know, there's lots of Karen memes being posted there. But I think it really then took off in 2020 or so the 2018, 2020, specifically online as a way for black people or people of colour to call out problematic behaviour that white women were showing in particular. So it's a way of, you know, white women calling the police on black people and policing the space, if you want, the public space, which is obviously a real. a threat potentially as well to them, you know, that sort of wielding that, that privilege and that

power to call authorities on black people. And it was used as a way to call this out, you know, to say you're a cavern, you're one of those, you're a type of person who polices these spaces and who shows racist entitlement, if you want. And it's really taken off from there. As things happen on social media, things go viral and it gets picked up. So you've got hashtags and then Karen snapped, which trended on Twitter, I think it was January 2020. And then with Black Lives Matter that sort of all kicked off in 2020, I think it got really amplified then as well. The earliest time that I remember, like actually clocking it as like, oh God, the corner of Karen,

that it was that, I can't remember who the hell she was, but it was a white woman who'd basically phoned the police on a black guy who was walking his dog or something in the park. It was utterly ridiculous. Absolutely. I think that's probably one of those. that a lot of people are aware of and that really sparked off that whole Karen debate. So she was calling the police on a black man in a park. Apparently he'd asked her to put a dog on a lead.

That's it. Yeah. And then she said, I'm being threatened by an Afro-American man in the park. He's threatening me and my dog. So calling the police and asking them to come because she feels threatened by him. And he recorded that encounter. And that then meant absolutely viral. And it was also, I think it was actually, it just happened.

to be, I believe, the same day that George Floyd was murdered. And so it really, I think, struck a chord as well with all that was going on at the time and in terms of, you know, calling out racist behaviour and the way white people can wield power over black people by calling the authorities. I was trying to think of a historical equivalent of the name, not the actual name itself, but like the kind of the caricature, the insult of. I'm trying to think of a historical equivalent for it. I didn't come up with anything, but listening to what you were saying there, there is a very, very long history of particularly white women weaponising their privilege

and their victimhood to attack people of colour, especially black men. There's a very long history of that. Yeah, absolutely. And there's been lots of research done into that as well. So there are other names as well used. So it's not uncommon to use a certain name. for that and call out a certain behaviour. So there's other names like Chad, Becky.

Barbecue Becky was a meme that's gone around a lot. Barbecue, Becky. Somebody complaining about black people having a barbecue in a public park. And then the picture, there's still of that video of her on the phone to the police, got edited into various other pictures. So that really made around online. So there's Becky, there's Chad, there's Ken. So quite often we have Karen and Ken.

Yes. Kevin potentially. But even if you look further back, Miss Anne and Mr. Charlie were terms used. But that goes back sort of to the 19th century. And again, to refer to white people having privilege over black people at the time. So I don't think that's much in use anymore. At least I have never encountered it being used. No, I've never heard of that.

But that's interesting that there have always been these, what would you call them? Like, I want to say it's a name, but Karen is a name, but it's like what? It's a caricature. It's a label. Yeah, absolutely. So we call it, in our research, we call it a category. So we're using an approach that's called membership categorization analysis that looks at how people or members, if you want, members of society categorize each other.

So this is a category. And what it does is it packages all these things, these background things that we've just talked about. So things like entitlement, racial privilege. you know, being difficult about sometimes quite small matters, complaining, leveraging some kind of power. All of that is in there and it gets used by people, by members of society as a shortcut if you want. You can call somebody a Karen and you can dip into that entire discourse, that entire online conversation about what the Karen is, just through that one category. I suppose we should talk like a little bit about the history of the name itself because it's, I was trying to think, why the name Karen?

Why was it that particular? Because I definitely heard Becky being used in like little TikTok videos of people going, oh my God, shut up Becky, like to an imaginary person, definitely heard Kevin Bean use. I try to think why Karen. To me, it sounds like quite a modernish name, but slightly out of fashion. But it's actually, it's really quite old.

Yeah, exactly. So I've looked a bit into this. So it's a short form, apparently, of the name Catherine. And that goes back absolutely centuries. But Karen itself, apparently, is a Danish abbreviation, but it crops up in other languages as well. So if you have variants of the name in, I think, in Norwegian, in German, in English now. But that's where it comes from, really, apparently, initially.

And you're right, it's absolutely a name of its time. I think that's quite common for names. We go through these trends, don't me, of naming our children. You know, we've got sort of certain popular names that come in and out of fashion. and Karen clearly was one of those as well. Certainly if you look in an anglophone, English-speaking context, it was very popular in the sort of starting in the 40s and then 1950s and 60s. So interestingly, the boomer generation,

which brings me back to OK boomer in a nice kind of way, Karen is actually probably roughly the age of a baby boomer. So they would sort of be, when that kicked off on social media, there would have been sort of 50, 60, maybe 70. So it's that age group that it targets. And it's dropped in popularity again since then. So it sort of had a moment. But I don't think there are that many young Karen.

So it's 20-year-olds these days. There's not that many, I guess, call the Karen. No. The popularity of it must be crashing through the floor right now. Yeah, I thought that as well. It's quite harsh, isn't it? If you're called Karen, it's actually something... Yeah, exactly.

And it's actually something I'm really quite aware of when I talk about my research to people. So obviously, I use my... research and teaching. I talk to students who are obviously most of them of a different generation. But I also, you know, when I talk about it at conferences, etc. I'm quite aware that I think, ooh, I've probably got a number of people who are called Kevin in the room. And I'm actually really uncomfortable that their name gets used in that way. I feel sorry for them that that's happened, you know. It's really crap, isn't it? Because like, even though like you can intellectualize it and be like, look, it's an ongoing joke. It doesn't actually reflect who up. It's still your name.

If there was like a conversation of like, oh my God, Kate's are so awful. They're such dickheads. I mean, that's got to like make an impact somewhere. I feel like you must have like walk to apologize for your name for God's sake. That's really crap. Exactly. It must be really quite difficult.

And I guess it's a thing. Names get used in those ways. But also sometimes, you know, products get named in a certain way. And suddenly that name becomes associated with something else. I'm thinking of Alexa, for example. You know, So names get used in certain ways, and that can be quite challenging, I guess, for the people with that name.

And interestingly, sometimes we actually see this in our data as well. So we analyze social interactions. So we analyze people interacting face to face with each other and calling each other Karen. And sometimes you see this ambiguity playing out. So people actually make a choke around the fact that Karen can be a name as well as a category. So, you know, we've got interactions where somebody says to the other person, bye, Karen, even though they know they're not called. Karen. They then even say, I know you're not Karen, but you act like one, you know, sort of playing a joke on the fact that you can call somebody a Karen, even though they're not called Karen. And sometimes also choking around the fact that the other person might not necessarily realize what's going on. Not everyone necessarily knows what the Karen is. So they then sometimes

say, I'm not Karen or my name's not Karen or, you know, I don't know what your name is. And so it sort of plays on that ambiguity, I guess, as well sometimes, which is quite interesting. that people themselves show that they know this is not just a name, it is a category as well. I'll be back with Linda and Karen after this short break. You said there that you're analysing face-to-face interactions where people are used in the word Karen. I mean, like, what are you doing at Lily? Are you just going around to restaurants with notoriously bad service and just waiting for the fireworks? Where's this data coming from?

Absolutely. I mean, it would be great to just sort of be able to walk around life and record. but obviously for various ethical reasons, we're obviously not able to do that these days. So what we're doing is we're looking at interactions that have been recorded and uploaded to social media. So in a way, they are... Yeah, recordings that have happened without our involvement. So these are encounters in public spaces.

So quite often they're service encounters, you know, somebody going to buy a coffee or going to get some kind of product in a shop. So you've got quite a lot of sort of way to customer interaction. and things like that. But sometimes there are also just people encountering each other in public,

I don't know, waiting for a bus or quite often sort of road rage related things as well. You know, one person taking a space from the other person, lots of arguments around parking, etc. So these are sort of public encounters where then usually something happens and somebody starts to complain, so the so-called Karen, you know,

they're starting an argument, basically. And then usually one of the two people involved or sometimes somebody else just watching, so a bystander, starts to record this on their mobile phone. Obviously these days, most of us walk around with a mobile phone, so we've got the ability to just at any moment, you know, pull out our phone and go, right, I'm recording this. And then, so basically these are recordings, it's quite serendipitous if you want, so by chance recordings of these encounters that are then uploaded on social media afterwards. And that's where we find them. So we look at Twitter or TikTok, YouTube.

And there are, you know, thousands and thousands of these recordings on social media. And we're interested in what's going on with this category. So what's making the person call the other person a Karen? Can we see something in their behavior? What's the Karenness, if you want? The things they do, the things they behave that make them a Karen. How is that categorization done? How are they called a Karen?

And then how is it responded to, do people actually respond to this in some way, showing recognition or challenge it. Yeah, what happens next, basically. And it's not always the case that Karen is used in the actual interactions are actually captured in the video. Interestingly, quite often it happens afterwards on social media. So you film some encounter, you know, some argument you've had with someone, put it online and say, hashtag Karen or look at this Karen, here's another Karen I've encountered. It's easy to think of it as only being an online internet meme. And I suppose that when something is a meme, it feeds on itself, doesn't it? Then it becomes bigger and bigger and bigger.

But this has escaped off the internet, hasn't it? This is not just an online thing. This is very much in real life out there. People are calling each other Karen's and policing each other's behaviour. Yes, absolutely. And it's great if we can capture that. So some of these videos show us that, obviously, a lot of the things when people call each other Karen, we'll never see because they never make it onto social media.

But so we get a window into that when somebody uploads such interactions. And in our research, we've seen that they do that in two different ways. So even if when they call each other in the encounter a Karen, they don't always do it to the person's face. So sometimes we have these where somebody just goes, you're an absolute Karen. But sometimes you have to do that with an online audience already in mind. And I think these are really fascinating examples where, you know, the Karen, for example, is on the phone to the Polymer. he's walking away and it's quite visibly out of fear shots

because we can't hear anymore what she's saying on the phone to the police so she's walked quite a long way away and then the person recording says and this everyone is you know Karen calling the police so they're doing that

already knowing that this will be seen by a future online audience who's not currently present in the space but will be in the future it's interesting that it's shifted already in just the few short years that it's actually really taken off where it's gone from encapsulating white privilege and sort of weaponising victimhood of white women

into just women being angry. And I am quite conscious of the fact and slightly concerned that it might have morphed into something that is just about shutting people down, that it no longer has its origins, which was in a very effective way for calling out, privileged that it can become an abuse, especially because it's targeted at women and especially because it's targeted at older women, there is an incredibly long history of attempting to shut women up of calling them shrews and skulls and all of these things. And I do have some concerns that the Karen is being weaponised like that. What's your thoughts? I think it's a good point

that you mentioned there that it certainly was a very powerful meme, if you want, or a powerful way of calling out racist behavior and making it visible as a phenomenon. But what we do see in our data, sometimes race really does play a role and also gets oriented to, so people make race relevant and accuse each other of having been racist, etc.

But not always. Sometimes race doesn't seem to play a role anymore. It really just becomes a way of shutting someone down. I think it's a tricky line there. You see both happen online, But I do think if it becomes a way, a short-hand, like the OK boomer, to shut women down, that that is quite a dangerous development, I think, as well. So I can see the value in doing that and making something visible as a phenomenon,

that the problem that we need to talk about. But it can also flip the other way, I think, and just become a way of shutting people down. There isn't a male equivalent. I know we've said that there's Kevin, and I've definitely, sorry Kevin's, but I've definitely heard people doing sketches and stuff on TikTok hopefully just like

oh shut up Kevin like they're talking to an imaginary person but it doesn't have that same cachet it doesn't have that same like if I said something oh stop being such a Kevin that's not entirely clear

what I mean by that it's definitely the targeting the woman somehow that is the stronger one sometimes you have Karen and Ken which is also quite pleasing with the alliteration of course

so Karen and Ken do come in a pair sometimes and we've even got people you know, we've seen interactions where people say hashtag Karen and Ken to the people there. So they say out loud, hashtag Karen and Ken saying you are a Karen and the Ken. So that does happen. But we've not really seen many or as many encounters where somebody is a Ken without there being a Karen. So we haven't specifically looked. I'm sure there are plenty of examples, but they're certainly not as dominant and as obvious as the Karen ones. So if you have a Ken, you usually have a Karen, but not necessarily the other way around.

So it does seem to suggest that there's something going on as well with gender or targeting women specifically. Because there's certainly, it's not like men can't be complete enough of dicks and all genders and non-binary people and everybody are capable of being absolute awful people out in public of behaving really badly. I've certainly seen loads of videos of that. So what is it about when a woman does it, it becomes this whole categorisation and that there isn't one.

I mean, is it that when we see men behaving badly out in public, it's like football riots and beating people up? And that when women do it, the power that they use is, I need to talk to the manager. I don't like, is it maybe that way off the mark with that? I think you're onto something there. Maybe it's what we expect of people. I guess we go around the world having expectations about other people,

whether we want to or not. Some of these are stereotypes, as much as we probably try and push against that. And so when we see people behave in certain ways, then we always think about what are the norms in society, you know, what's appropriate for somebody to behave and what's acceptable. And it may well be that women get called out

more strongly for behaviour that men might more likely be to get away with, I do wonder. Yeah. Interesting. I've definitely seen men call the man you're out. I've definitely seen them behaving very badly, but it does not have that same level of judgment around it. And I guess again, I mean, it's sort of looking at our data, because that's what we're really about. We're trying to see what actually matters to the people in our data.

And we do have interactions where there's a particular one that comes to mind where you have a man and a woman arguing about who's caught who off in a car. And the man says, well, you're an absolute Karen. You've thrown racial slurs at me. So he clearly says, you know, you're this kind of Karen who's being racist to someone. And she counters that by saying, well, hang on, you've cut me off and you shouldn't treat women that way. So she clearly orients to sexism. So we've got that sort of struggle between, is this something about racist? Is this about sexism? Is it about both? So people themselves, I think, sometimes try to figure out what's the issue at stake in this encounter, you know, and whose version trumps the other. And for us as analysts, obviously, we're not

trying to take sides. We're not trying to decide that argument at all. That's not for us. That's for the members of society to do. But we're interested in how people make sense of that and how that's being done. And we also have the challenge. We never see the beginning of these recordings. That's the nature of our data. We never really see what started it. You know, well, kicked it all off. Because usually the moment when people hit record is when something's already gone badly wrong, you know. And we're missing that. We can't. can't see that. We only then have people saying, oh, you did such and such. No, you did this. And that's all we've got to go on, really. Of course, when you hit record, the second you've

got your phone out and you're recording, you're on your best fucking behaviour then. Yeah, exactly. You are absolute because you want to make the other person look as enraged and unreasonable as possible. Yeah, absolutely. I think reasonable is a good word that you mentioned there. It's coming across as the reasonable party. That's how you win these things. Make yourself be seen as the person who's reasonable, who's, you know, been doing normal things and the other person is out of order, the other person is the antagonistic one, the problematic one. And that's, yeah, that's how you come off as the winner in this dispute, if there are any winners, which, to be honest, looking at these videos, I hardly think there are. But, you know, that's sort of being the

reasonable person and recording it is your evidence. Do you have any evidence that the Karen meme categorization is losing any of its power that's on its way out? like the OK boomer isn't as popular in use. It sort of had a little blip and then it vanished. Or do you think Karen, it's here to stay? That's a good question. I guess these phenomena, they all sort of come and go up to a point. I mean, certainly Karen has been around for quite a bit longer now than OK boomer

and has had, I would say, much more traction. So it may well be here to stay for a while. And I think what it really does, this calling out certain behaviour in certain ways, you know, sanctioning public conduct online, using the online audience in the millions to call out problematic behaviour, that's something that doesn't necessarily go away.

I think mobile technology has given us this disability. So disputes are not a new thing, that people argue in public are not, is not new, that we call each other names to try and capture some kind of behaviour. That's not new. But what's new is that we can film this, and make it available to an audience in the millions. So sometimes your encounter in the post office

with one other person is seen by millions of people. And I think that's what's new about it. And that's not, I don't think that that's anything that's going to go away anytime soon. Whether we still call that a Karen in the future, I don't know. It could well be something else in the future. But this phenomenon of using social media to police

and to shame people after a point, or police public conduct and sort of say, what's acceptable, what's not, what are our norms, I do think that's quite likely here to stay for now. It can get wildly out of control. Now, I'm not going to defend the actions of a lot of these people who are being called Karen. When you see them online, a lot of the time you do think, God, you absolute flat. But a lot of the time, the behaviour doesn't warrant what happens to them afterwards. Like, them kicking off because somebody wouldn't let them park in their favourite parking.

or whatever it is. That's shitty behaviour, but it doesn't warrant the entire world hating on you. It's like it's so disproportionate sometimes. Yeah, absolutely. I think, I think that's the danger of social media as well, that something can really take on the life of its own. It goes viral, so to speak, right? And it gets reshared and retweeted or reposted and millions see it. And it can have really very real consequences to people. Absolutely. People have lost their jobs. So we've got data where people say, please lose your job over this. They're filming the other person going, carry on, just, you know, please lose your job. You know, I can just see it coming.

So sometimes people show awareness of that power that they can wield through this almost like a modern day pillory kind of thing. You know, you can brand somebody as something and they can have real consequences. And they are not then there to be able to apologize or explain their stance. As you say, these are sometimes really problematic issues and we shouldn't down tone, you know, the awful racist behaviour that has been shown. But again, there is then millions of pylons, if you want, and no chance to, yeah, get back to that somehow. No. And it's not always some silly woman trying to call the police on a black man or a black woman or something like very

racist. It can just be someone kicking off because they can't get the kind of fries they want in a restaurant. Yeah, absolutely. That's bad behavior. I think especially these days, yes, what we see is sometimes it's just used for any woman showing bad behaviour can be a Karen. And I think that's where it loses some of its power as well. If it's not about calling out racist problematic behaviour anymore, but just any kind of behaviour that you don't like, then yes, it sort of muddles the waters a bit. Linda, you have been fascinating.

I have absolutely loved, I could keep talking to you about this for hours. And we should just say to all the Karen's out there is we do love you. Absolutely. We do. And I'm so sorry that your name is being so horribly abused. But Linda, you have been amazing to talk to you about Karen. It's been great talking to you as well. Thank you for having me on your podcast. People want to know more about you and your work. Where can they find you? If you want to read up on the research has just been talking about that's been published in the Journal of Internet Pragmatics. So it's called Facebook's about to know Karen, mobilizing social media to sanction public conduct. So that's out there if you want to have a read of that. I'm also on social. media, not as much actively posting, but I am there, so you can find me on X as well. Thank you so much for talking to me. You've been a treat. Thank you. Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Linda for joining me. And if you like what you heard, don't write to the manager. Just give us a like, a review and follow along wherever it is that you get your podcasts. If you want us to explore a subject or maybe you just fancy saying hello,

then you can email us at betwixt at history hit.com. We've got episodes on everything from the sex life of William Wallace to the kinky renaissance all coming your way. This podcast was edited and produced by Stuart Beckwith, the senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again, betwixt the sheets, The History of Sex Scandal in Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.