HealthyGamerGG - The Psychology of a Karen

Episode Date: May 2, 2022

Today Dr. K talks about Karens, Entitlement, and why there seems to be so many as of late. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/healthygamergg/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

75% of people who get diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder are men. Okay? So like for every three men that gets diagnosed, you get one woman who gets diagnosed with NPD. The interesting thing, though, is that Cairns tend to be a little bit more on the narcissistic side, right? So they'll be very, very prideful, very angry, very blaming of other people. So Cairns tend to be entitled. And what does that mean? So that means that when they show up somewhere, they expect something to happen.

and they believe that they deserve something, right? So if I show up at a tire store and I'm like, I want a pizza, like, I deserve a pizza. And like, that's not, it's not my mistake that I showed up at a tire store. It's your mistake for not providing me with pizza. They also tend to be shown as having a particular kind of haircut. We'll even dig into why that is. Okay. So I don't know if you guys know this, but recently, especially during the pandemic,

Karens have been on the rise, right? So we see more and more videos about Karens. And so generally speaking, what a Karen is is someone who gets really upset at something and mistreat someone. Oftentimes the Karen is female, which we'll kind of get to in a second. Oftentimes the Karen is white. And even some people have defined Karen as being specifically a Caucasian or white person. So you can't have Karens of other race.

We'll kind of dig into that a little bit. And then what happens is like these people are mistreaty. treating people, they're yelling, they're screaming, they're being generally mean. Another, you know, really common sort of thing is like they want to speak to the manager. They're unwilling to like really understand that things are not the fault of the person that they're talking to. Right. So like a classic Karen thing is like, I'm going to go to a pizza shop and order or I'm going to go to a tire shop and order a pizza. And then like the tire shop is like we don't sell pizza. we're a tire shop.

And then the Karen gets really, really, really angry at the person who's, like, behind the desk. And so there's even like, I think there's some, you know, even some really interesting, you know, memes about this, right? So, like, one is, and so Karen's are kind of like, what they tend to do is when they, when they get denied something that they want, what they tend to do is try to appeal to hire or, authority or think that their way is the right way and that other people are objectively wrong. And we've even seen like some really good memes about Karen's, right? So another important thing to consider is that the Karen is actually like an internet phenomenon, right? And so like this is the Elon Musk Karen. They also tend to be shown as having a particular kind of haircut. We'll even dig into why that is. Okay. So I think there's truth to all these things.

So this is where let's kind of just start by understanding like a little bit about, you know, what's going on with Karen's. So the first thing is like, let's talk about features of a Karen. So Karen's tend to be self-absorbed, right? So they like, they don't, they're not very empathic. They tend to mistreat people who are like in the service industry or they view is like socially below them. When they get denied something that may not be out of any malicious intent, they tend to get like angry and explode at people. they also will oftentimes appeal to higher authority. And so they'll do things like call the police.

They'll also like yell particular words that are grossly inappropriate to the situation. Right. So if like, you know, I saw some video where there was a black person who had asked a white woman to put their dog on a leash because it was, you know, like that's the rules for the park that they were in. And then the woman started yelling rape. and like the dude was super confused. And so they tend to like engage in very, very unhealthy or explosive or abusive behaviors. Generally speaking, they don't seem to be very happy. So kind of what's going on with a Karen?

I also see the word narcissism tossed around a lot. So we're going to talk for a second about narcissism. So we're going to talk a little bit about, you know, what are the characteristics of Karen's? What do we know about certain personality characteristics that people may have and certain personality aspects? that may apply to Karen's. We're going to talk a little bit about how Karen's form and how our impressions of Karen's form. We're also going to touch on some of these more social implications, like issues of race or gender.

That's definitely not my area of expertise. So I'm going to just kind of like really call attention to the fact that this exists, but it's not really something that we're going to sort of dive into. And then, yeah, we're going to talk a little bit about. and so then we'll kind of summarize like, you know, why are Karen's a thing? And even to a certain extent, why is their hair a particular way? So let's start by understanding narcissism. So a lot of people, when they see a Karen, they will say like, oh, this person is so self-absorbed,

they're narcissistic. So we have to understand a couple of things about personality characteristics and personality disorders specifically. So if you look at statistics, 75% of people who get diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder or men. Okay? So like for every three men that gets diagnosed, you get one woman who gets diagnosed with NPD. And there are other personality disorders like borderline personality disorder that I think basically has the flip ratio. So the majority of people who are diagnosed with borderline personality disorder are actually women. And so some people may wonder, is this like a gender bias? Is this a bias in the way

that we diagnose things like what's going on here? So I want you all to, we're going to sort of take a step back look at the history of psychiatric diagnosis. And prior to our current system of diagnosis, we used to have something called the personality disorders used to be clustered. So there used to be a cluster A personality disorders, cluster B personality disorders, and cluster C personality disorders. And back in this classification, cluster B included narcissism histrionic, which is like when you have grandiose kind of shows of things. And borderline personality disorder as well as antisocial personality disorder. And so essentially what we kind of saw was that there was a gender split in the cluster B personality disorders, that narcissists

and sociopaths tended to be more men, right? So like the majority of people who get diagnosed with these things are men. And the majority of people who get diagnosed with borderline personality disorder or histrionic personality disorder were women. But as like psychoanalysts and psychologists and like psychiatrists were looking at this kind of stuff, what they sort of realized is that there's a common root, which is why these got clustered together, and possibly due to the way that we get socialized and some other aspects of gender-specific things, that you can have a common root of like a lack of self-worth or an importance of other people treating you a particular way. That's kind of the core of all of these personality disorders.

that depending on your upbringing in society and even maybe to some degree like the effects of the Y chromosome and stuff like that, that this common root will manifest in one of two dimensions or directions. And if you're a man, it basically manifests as narcissism or antisocial personality disorder. If you're a woman, it's more likely to manifest as histrionic personality disorder or borderline personality disorder. So the common root, just to kind of explain this, is sort of this idea that like, my self-worth is determined by how I am treated. So the way that I feel about myself depends on how other people treat me. So if I'm treated well, I feel good.

If I'm treated poorly, I feel bad. And then each of these people, this is a little bit less true for antisocial personality disorder. I think that's in a lot of ways the odd one out. And then what a lot of people will do is engage in behaviors to correct this. So, for example, when you have a histrionic person, this is someone who will, like, you know, cry wildly, will, like, you know, engage in just a very drastic overt shows of behavior, usually for the purpose of getting some kind of emotional support or, like, yeah, like some kind of, like love, essentially. So we'll also see this in people who have borderline personality disorder where, like, if you try to break up with someone who has borderline personality disorder, or if you set some kind of love, you know, limit on them. So you say, hey, I'm sorry, I can't talk right now. I'm busy. They will feel really,

really bad. They'll feel very, very rejected. And as they feel rejected, they will engage in all manner of different kinds of behaviors to fix that. So if they want to talk to you, they want to talk to you. And they'll do whatever it takes to talk to you. And so over time, like, they need you to talk to them, right? So they really, really want to engage in this conversation. And if you set some kind of limit, they'll do all kinds of behaviors. On the one hand, they'll cry. They'll sort of like, sometimes they'll do things like threaten suicide, right? So I don't want you to leave me. So if you try to leave, I'll threaten suicide. Maybe they may actually feel like killing themselves in that moment. But the key thing is that when they threaten suicide, that changes the behavior of the other party.

And then if you say, oh, no, no, don't do that. Okay, fine. I'll stay. And so they'll sort of be very kind of emotionally manipulative that way. So people on the other end of the spectrum feel very emotionally manipulated, right, if you're in a relationship with this person. But I don't think it's quite as malicious as people experience it as. These are just ways of getting our needs met. And so on the narcissistic side, for example, we'll also see similar things, but it's like, you know, they'll get angry if someone threatens their credibility. They'll get angry if someone threatens their competence. They'll lash out. oftentimes they won't cry, they'll do kind of the opposite. They'll bully people, right? So one is kind of like this emotionally manipulative kind of like being a vulnerable bully versus like an overt bully. And so as people

sort of were looking at narcissism, they also realize the same thing is going on. Like I need people to treat me with respect and I'm going to do whatever I need to to get the praise and affection of other people. So people who are narcissistic will brag, right? They'll show off. They'll show people how much money they have. They'll, you know, make these really, like, out of touch statements. I recently saw a video about a guy who was, like, talking about how, like, you know, the ROI on cooking is really, really bad. So no one should ever cook if you want to make it big in life. Right. So they'll, like, they'll have these, like, very interesting conclusions. I mean, there may be some validity to that statement on some level. But generally speaking, like, narcissists will be big on show.

and if we show, like if I show that I'm awesome and people are like, oh my God, you're so awesome, that'll kind of feed my narcissism and then I feel good about myself because everyone is treating me well. So it's once again a behavioral reinforcement because like if I show off and people respond to me positively, then that's going to reinforce my desire to show off more. Okay. So the key thing here is that the Karen is not really on the borderline or sometimes they can be on the histrionic side, right? So like yelling randomly, like when when someone is, you know, telling you to put your, your dog on a leash is a good example of like, you know, like histrionics. The interesting thing, though,

is that Cairns tend to be a little bit more on the narcissistic side, right? So they'll be very, very prideful, very angry, very blaming of other people. And that's, that's generally speaking, is more common in men than women, which probably has something to do with the way that the diagnosis was developed. So the early interviews and the early diagnostic criteria of narcissistic personality disorder was heavily influenced by men. So like people were, I don't mean that in a bad way, I mean that when people were looking at narcissism and trying to define the characteristics, they were interviewing primarily men. And so as they interviewed primarily men, they didn't really appreciate that there's a gender component to this. And so they selected for these things like

grandiosity, which is a big part of the diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder. which is like less common in women in female narcissists, but more common in male narcissists. Like, grandiosity is a big part of it. So part of this diagnosis is kind of like, it's sort of like shaped in the way it has sort of an inherent gender built into it. And Karens are kind of like narcissistic, okay? So the other aspects of Karens that are kind of interesting is that they tend to have a sense of entitlement. Now, this is where a lot of people start to bring in race, socioeconomic. economic status and things like that, and for good reason. So, Karens tend to be entitled,

and what does that mean? So that means that when they, when they show up somewhere, they expect something to happen, and they believe that they deserve something, right? So if I show up at a tire store and I'm like, I want a pizza, like, I deserve a pizza and like, that's not, it's not my mistake that I showed up at a tire store. It's your mistake for not providing me with pizza. And part of what we see here is sort of like this narcissistic defense mechanism where like the stupider you make a Karen feel, the more you kind of threaten them, the more of an explosion you're going to get from the Karen. So if a Karen goes to a tire store and they ask for pizza, that is objectively idiotic. The more of the objectively idiotic situation you put a Karen into,

the more idiotic they are, the more of a Karen response you're going to get, right? So this is why like, if you tell someone, hey, your dog needs to be on a leash, and like clearly that Karen is in the wrong, and this is what we see in Karen videos, right, is like the Karen is clearly in the wrong. That's why it's really, really easy to hate Karen's because they're clearly in the wrong. It's really easy to make fun of them because they're clearly in the wrong. Because of the way that the kind of psychology of narcissistic defense mechanisms work, the more idiotic we make you feel, the more Karen behavior is going to come out, right? because an apology is like out of the question.

I'm like in it. So it's kind of bizarre. So this is what creates such an extreme scenario. So the size of the explosion is going to be correlated with the size of the idiocy. And furthermore, on the internet, we have something that selects for extremes, right? We don't select for like mild things. So what tends to happen on social media is what floats to the surface are the most extreme examples, which in turn gives this idea that Karens are like absolutely.

insane, right? Because we're sort of catching them at their lowest moments. Sure, they're, you know, they're responsible for sure. But Karen's, I don't think, are like, some of it is personality, but some of it is like catching them on a bad day, right? So anyone we can kind of catch on a bad day and they're going to behave more extremely. The problem is that with the internet, what we tend to propagate is the most extremes. So if you look at like, you know, an internet video of a particular person, chances are what you're going to do you know, what you're going to be, you you're going to find for any given random person. If you have a little bit of internet fame, chances are what you have internet fame for is one of the most extreme moments in your life.

Right? So if it's like, woman survives shark attack, and it's like a video of a woman, like everyone sees that video. And it's like, that woman's life is not shark attack after shark attack after shark attack. But the way that the internet works, we tend to propagate the most extreme situations. So Karens are sort of placed in this situation where they're like, they feel like idiots, probably because they make some kind of mistake and someone setting some kind of limit on them. Hopefully, I like to think compassionately for a second and think you catch them on a bad day. They have some kind of explosion. So let's talk a little bit about the explosion and what's going on there. So we're going to talk a little bit about entitlement, okay? So the other thing that

Karen's tend to have a lot of privilege, right? So they like feel entitled. So this study was looking at the psychology of what's called entrenched privilege, which is high socioeconomic status individuals from affluent backgrounds are uniquely high in entitlement. So this is also where there's this kind of this idea that a Karen is like a rich white woman, which I don't think is necessarily true because I've seen a lot of Karen behavior, you know, like from people who are from lower socioeconomic statuses. And so the interesting thing that this paper sort of found is that the amount of entitlement that you have is not necessarily based on your socioeconomic status, which is interesting. It's based on the socioeconomic status that you grew up in. So what we tend to find is that people who are

born into low socioeconomic status and become wealthy are not entitled. People who are born into low socioeconomic status and stay in low socioeconomic status are not entitled. But when you come from high socioeconomic status, that's what makes you entitled. So when you grow up with privilege, that's what gives you this idea. And it sort of makes sense, right? So like, I mean, like, you know, if you grew up, grow up in a situation where your parents are able to provide for you Christmas presents without worrying about financial things, you will come to expect and even be entitled to Christmas gifts, right? The same is true of birthdays. If you come from a background where, like, birthday gifts, like you get a ton of gifts on your birthday, you will come to be entitled to and expect

birthday gifts. So what we tend to find is that generally speaking, entitlement has to do with your background, which also we can sort of see kind of a racial component here, which is that generally speaking, if we look at, you know, all of the ethnicities, Caucasians, I don't know if this statement is factually true, I think it is, but feel. free to correct me. So generally speaking, I think, you know, the highest percentage of people, at least in the West, that come from high socioeconomic backgrounds are going to be Caucasian, right? So we can sort of start to see a little bit of a racial component here. The other interesting thing that's very fascinating is if we look at people who have high levels of entitlement,

they are much more likely to respond to bad luck with anger. Okay. So this really explains a lot about a Karen. So we have a Karen who probably grew up expecting a lot, right? Maybe was a someone. And this is where the narcissism also comes in, which is like, when I come from a prominent family, and I used to be rich, and I used to be a big deal, or I grew up in a southern town where my mom was this and my dad was this and my dad was like president of the Rotary Club. And then I kind of don't amount to much. And I wind up in Walmart. Nothing against people who shop at Walmart. I shop at Walmart too on occasion. You know, like this kind of faded glory enhances this narcissism.

And it gives these people a sense of entitlement. And then what tends to happen is like sometimes it's not even your fault that you went to the tire store, right? Because the tire store is called pizza pie, right? Pizza pie tires. And it's like there's something like that. I don't know. And so then what happens is these Karen sometimes will genuinely face like bad luck.

It's not their fault. Like if I go to a store and something is actually. out of stock, right? It's not like my fault that they're out of stock. It's not the service person's like fault and Mario tires. Perfect. It's not, it's not the service per, like, it's not like the, you know, the checkout person's fault that something is out of stock. But my sense of entitlement, when things, when there are events that are not really against me in any way, and I experience bad luck, I tend to have some kind of explosion. And so this is another thing that sort of contributes to the Karen's is that generally speaking, something is wrong that starts the Karen off, right?

It's not like the Karen just walks in and maybe I could be wrong here. But generally speaking, there's something that like gets this going. Either the Karen makes a mistake. The Karen gets criticized in some way. The Karen feels afraid or something like that. They feel threatened. Or there's like some kind of bad luck. What do you mean you're out of like my favorite coffee beverage?

How dare you? And they'll sort of take it as a personal insult. There's something negative that happens. and then they tend to lash out at the person who's nearest to them. This is another area where I think the entitlement and sort of the hatred towards Karens really comes from is what we usually see is that Karens are people who believe in like kind of a clear hierarchy. And so what they sort of probably this has to do with developmental upbringing and stuff

like that, they think that some people are above them and some people are below them. And so what we tend to see a lot of Karens doing is abusing people in the service industry, right? So there's like a waiter or a clerk or something like that who really has no control over what the Karen wants. But the Karen just feels completely entitled to kind of like lash out of them. And this is where the let me speak to your manager kind of things comes from. So if we kind of tunnel down a little bit more, we can hypothesize a couple of other things.

So let's talk about let me speak to your manager. So human beings tend to attribute the behavior that other people engage in to their own psychology. So if someone does something, this is normal. So if someone does something, the intention behind that behavior is not based on my observation of that person, but is based on my own beliefs. So if someone waives to me, the meaning of that is going to be based on why would I wave to someone. Okay? So we see a lot of these kinds of problems in like relationships and stuff when, for example, different things mean, things mean different things to different people. So, for example, I've had relationships where people will get upset with me because I don't

call or text them on a regular basis. And for some people, calling or texting on a regular basis is a sign of caring about another person. So there's a behavior and what that behavior means, the intention behind that behavior or the meaning of that behavior is different to different people. Whereas like, I'm okay. Like, if you don't text me for a month or even three months or a year, I've had friends that I haven't seen in like two years.

I haven't even talked to them in two years. And we'll see each other after two years. And it's like we pick up exactly where we left off. The time doesn't really mean much to me in terms of like the maintenance or importance of a relationship. The point is that different behaviors will mean different things to different people. And oftentimes what we'll see in Karen's is that Karen's will be like big into petty power plays and gatekeeping people and like other kinds of like petty kind of toxic behavior, which means that

when they feel gate kept by someone, they're attributing their own intentions to that person. Right? So like if I'm a Karen and I tend to be petty, like, if someone asks me for help but like doesn't do it in, you know, a nice enough way and I feel offended, like I'm not going to help them. You know, I'm going to be like a petty overlord over my domain and I'm going to gatekeep whenever I can. And so then what happens is when when someone else sets a limit on them, they are attributing all of their own internal intentions to that person's behavior. And that oftentimes really upsets them. The other thing is that Karen's also oftentimes, I mean, we've never interviewed a Karen,

right? So we don't really know here, but this is all kind of hypothesis based on some scientific studies and observations of behavior. So the other thing is that Karen's tend to think that they're objectively right, right? So like if they're entitled, they're like, this is the way of the world. Like, I deserve a pizza, whether it's a tire shop or whatever, for some, reason they've grown up in a particular way where the world needs to conform to my wants. This is a key concept that they've kind of grown up with.

And chances are they grew up in a household where like this was happening, right? So there was a domineering figure in the household. And when they were a kid, what they wanted didn't matter. And there's a powerful person in the household. There's a powerful person in the hierarchy. And what they want, their word is law. And so as the Karen assumes that role, as they grow into the parent, they start behavior. the same way because that's the rules of the world that they were taught.

And so they sometimes feel like this petty person is gapekeeping me. I'm not, I'm better than this person. I don't need to listen to this person. This person must be incompetent because they're not providing me with what I want. I feel entitled. I get angry. So let me talk to your manager because surely someone with more power and more competence than you is more likely to agree with me, right?

That's the idea behind the Karen is because like I'm objectively right. So the more powerful you get and the smarter you get, the more likely they are to fix this problem on my behalf. Now, the other challenging thing here is that sometimes that behavior gets reinforced, right? So, like, this is the kind of thing where, like, talking to a manager can be sort of assuaging for your ego to begin with. And the manager comes out and apologizes or maybe fixes the problem or does some kind of override that the lower person couldn't do. but sometimes this behavior gets reinforced, right? By talking to the manager and making enough of a hissy fit, I actually get what I want. So throwing temper tantrums, why do people throw temper tantrums?

Because they get us what we want, right? This kind of goes back to what we were saying at the beginning about narcissism and borderline and histrionic, that if a behavior gets rewarded, even if it's a nasty behavior, that behavior is going to get reinforced. So why do they ask for managers? Because sometimes asking for managers works, right? So we've conditioned to Karen's. So that's sort of the psychology of a Karen. Now we're going to look at a couple of other dimensions.

So one is that there seems to be a racial component to Karen. So some people even define Karen's as, first of all, women and second of all, white. And so we're going to kind of take a quick look at this paper. And so the angry Karen is invoked. to indicate her manipulation of her racial power, but she is equally significant, we suggest, for her positioning within a pre-existing antagonistic service economy. So this is a paper that's sort of talking a little bit about racial components to Karenism, which I think is like very possible or a component of it.

So as the term has grown, I think it started to encompass men and people of different ethnicities. It's not my place to say, you know, that this is right or wrong. I think if we look back at sort of tracing the etiology or the origin of the word Karen, I think it actually started on Twitter in predominantly black communities talking about white people and their experience of working with entitled white women. So, you know, I'm not saying that Karen's going to be exclusively white. It's not my place to make that judgment.

I think that there's sort of like there are definitely racial components to this, but it's unclear to me. I don't think there's real, you know, science that. been done on this. People have made observations and terms tend to evolve and stuff like that. And clearly like, you know, Elon Musk being a Karen sort of suggests that, I mean, he's white, but he's not a woman. And so I've seen also on social media videos of non-white women being Karen's as well. But like there's definitely seems to be sort of a shared experience or common experience that Karen's are oftentimes white. And that may in turn have to do with things like

socioeconomic status or entitlement, which may be more correlates. with Caucasian gender, I mean, Caucasian ethnicity as opposed to other ethnicities, so it sort of makes sense to me. But I don't think it's necessarily white. I think it's these other constituent components that are correlated with race. The next thing is that there are even tones now of like different kinds of, once again, racial, this isn't, this doesn't sort of talk about it, but they're like racial components, but they're also starting to be gender components of Karens. So sometimes, like, misogynistic people will use, or people with misogynistic attitudes will, like, use the term of Karen, right? So, like, it's also become a vehicle that has been co-opted

for misogyny. The interesting thing is that there are terms that have been co-opted for misandry as well, right? So, like, I think in-cell and SIMP are two words that, for example, like have been co-opted, right? So these are things that now, if people have misandric views, they'll sort of use these kinds of terms as like a way to blame the person for being this thing, which is actually like a mask for my anti-gender language. Okay. So, yeah, so we're just going to kind of touch on that. There are definitely like racial and gender components to Karen, not my area of expertise. So next thing that we're going to talk a little bit about is why are Karen's on the rise and what's going on?

So next thing to talk a little bit about is online presence. So I think part of the reason that we've seen so many more Karen's recently is that a couple of things. So the first is that we've seen a rise of Karen's during the pandemic. okay and so I think this has a lot of really really interesting um connotations to it the first is that the pandemic was an inordinate amount of stress on people as a whole so when you stress the whole population right the people who have these current tendencies are going to respond to the stress in a particularly negative way okay so the first thing is that the world was worse for everyone and everyone is getting worse so we saw you know

increases, like up to even by some statistics, you know, 300% increases in things like depression and anxiety. So we're going to see like different people respond to stress in different ways. So some people get depressed. Some people get anxious. We also saw, you know, an increase in suicidal ideation unclear whether there was really an increase in total net suicides. I haven't seen the data on that. But we're also seeing an increase in like Karen like behavior, right, being angry and The other thing to remember is that the pandemic also had other influences besides stress on Karen explosions. Because remember that the pandemic resulted in more people having bad luck, right? So the likelihood that stores were closed, the likelihood that they didn't have your product in stock,

people are out sick. So things are taking longer at restaurants. Right. People are understaffed. They can't work. You know, all kinds of changes happened that made the world objectively like a harder place to live in. And if we remember about people with entitlement who experience bad luck, respond with anger, the pandemic is going to increase that kind of relationship. Okay. So the pandemic is sort of like it's stressful mentally, but also objectively and physically and in the world, Karen's have more things to be upset about, right? So when these two things come together, they're going to increase Karen-like behavior, which is part of the reason why I think we saw such an explosion of Karen's stuff on social media. Which brings me to the last point that we're going to talk about,

about Cairns, which is online drift. So the other thing that's kind of going on on the internet, so there's even some studies that sort of show that participation in particular kinds of social media activities are more likely to engage in like entitlement behavior. So like mask mandates and sheeple and things like that is a good example of this, where if people are talking about, you know, like, for example, there's a lot of, you know, like, for example, were particular groups, social media groups, that cause people to become radicalized. And oftentimes, Karens are a part of those groups. Right. So now, for example, like when a Karon walks into a restaurant that has a mask mandate, as a result of the radicalization of online drift,

that Karen is much more likely to explode. So what does that mean? The radicalization of online drift. So generally speaking, there is a surface of the internet. And the surface of the the internet is generally speaking, like, pretty acceptable. And then what we see on the internet, and there have been really good studies done about this, that what happens over time is, like, I start out up here, but over time, I, like, drift deeper into the internet and into more radical extremes. Okay? So, like, a good example of this is like, you know, you can start out on Google or Wikipedia, which is, like, relatively neutral. But as you move from platforms, or even things like Twitter,

where as you move from platforms like Twitter to Reddit, to Discord, to specific discords, to, you know, like 4chan, 8chan. Like,

you know, 8chan is just twice as much as 4chan, right? So, like, what happens is like, we'll move to more radical platforms that are more like echo chambers, and will actually,

like, radicalize our thinking. So this is something that it doesn't also have to, to be in that sort of way. So the other way, the interesting thing, we should maybe do an experiment on this. Or if you go on YouTube, you'll also go down like radicalization algorithms. Right. So if you watch a single video on a particular topic, YouTube will start pushing you in that direction. So if you watch a single topic about, let's say, like an inflammatory

video about feminism or misandry, like you'll start going down a particular way. If you watch something that is misogynistic, you'll start getting fed like other misogynistic videos. If you start watching, like, so I would sometimes watch cooking videos. And so like now, like half of my YouTube suggestions are like people grilling things. Okay. And like it starts out with like a very simple grilling thing, but then like over time we're getting into like hardcore grilling in my YouTube algorithm. My YouTube algorithm is super confused though because my wife watches stuff on it. My kids watch stuff on it. So the YouTube doesn't know what to serve us. It doesn't know if we want a video about grilling steak, like nursery rhymes, or like DotaVods or makeup tutorials. Like, are my, my YouTube

algorithm is so confused, right? But what happens with Karens is that they tend to engage in social communities, online social communities, where there's a heavy amount of drift and radicalization, which then like changes the way they view the world. And then when they go interact in public, right so if I am participating in like racially discriminatory groups or like we're hate speech anti-black people and I'm walking in the park with my dog off the leash and a black man walks up to me and asks me to put the dog on the leash all of that radicalization is going to come to a head combined with the narcissistic injury of me breaking a rule and since I'm racist a black person telling me about rules like how dare they right and so then I'm going to explode and then

gets captured on social media, then it gets posted somewhere, everyone sees it, and then what do you think happens to a Karen who sees themselves on social media? Because now we're going to come full circle. Right? So what happens? The narcissistic injury gets way worse, right? They feel more hurt, and the more hurt they feel, the more of an idiot they seem, they radicalize even further, right? They become even more narcissistic. And then they're like, how dare they? Now it's like these young kids on the internet, right? And now they're poo-pooing millennials in Gen Z because the millennials made me look like an idiot.

And so it kind of like, it just loops. And so like this phenomenology of Cairns is really fascinating. I don't know how much of what I'm saying is actually like scientifically valid. right? So it's like this is the kind of thing where we have to extrapolate. There aren't studies. I mean, there are studies we looked at a couple. But the truth is that it's a complex phenomenon that involves all kinds of things. It probably starts with some amount of personality characteristics. It probably starts with a particular kind of upbringing that leads to a sense of entitlement, which may have something to do with socioeconomic status, may have something to do with the race. And then as we start to add some of these issues about stress from the pandemic, the way that stress manifests, even bad luck. and then when we toss on a couple of other, you know, lighter fuel on the flame, the first bit of lighter fuel is the Internet where the most extreme content becomes normalized. And then we get an impression that this is what Karens are behaving like day in and day out. Right? Whereas hopefully, thankfully, I think, you know, people are not, this isn't happening

every day to people. I mean, we encounter it from time to time. Everyone encounters it from time to time. But the internet is all about making the extreme and rare very, very common. That's what we get propagated on. This is really simple, like even for dozens of years, dozens now, so like for 20 years. If you look at things like Facebook, so Facebook early, early on when we were looking at the early impacts of mental health on Facebook, or even things like Twitch, you know, this applies to basically all the platforms, you know, where we're like, I log on, it's my birthday one day out of 365 days. a year. But every day I log on and I see like people celebrating their birthdays, it makes me feel like people are just having the time of their life all the time. Because the things that are most

upvoted, the things that are like the most are the things that are going to show up on my feed. And so one thing from each person on my, how many people I'm friends with is going to show up on my feed once a year, one birthday. But what it looks to me is I'm only celebrating my birthday one day out of 365. And all these people are constantly celebrating birthdays and constantly having a good time. So the extremes rise to the top and give us an unfair perspective on what the world is actually like. So this is why like spending time on the internet skews our view. That combined with things like online drift and online radicalization, when Karens participate in these online communities, where, you know, the people are being racially attacked constantly.

And let's remember that these online communities don't really think critically, right? And the ones that we're a part of, you may think, ah, ha, ha, ha, ha, that Karen's They're not thinking critically, but I guarantee you the community you're in right now doesn't think critically either. That's just not how they work. So if I go onto the Dota 2 subreddit and post make a post about lull, I object, I played both of these games for five years. I objectively think that lull is better. Here's why I'm going to get downvoted into oblivion. No one's going to take that seriously.

I can go onto the Loll subreddit and do the same thing. I played both of these games and you can make the same exact post. And if you posted in the Dota 2 subreddit, Dota 2 is better than Lull, you're going to get 1,000 upvotes. If you posted in the Lull subreddit, you're going to get 10,000 down votes because the law community is so much bigger. Right? So this is where, like, this is going to happen in online communities. And we're not actually that different. So this online drift sort of reinforces the ideas that a Karen has.

And then once again, once we make fun of the Karens, right, because we don't treat them with compassion. So if I had to ask y'all, you know, my sense is that the. the person who is the least deserving, the class of people who is the least deserving of compassion are Karen's, right, on the internet. And so this is just a consequence of the world that we live in. So that's what I'm thinking about Karen's. Hopefully that'll help you understand. Last thing, I'll give you some, hopefully some tips about how to deal with a Karen in the wild, but unclear whether these will actually work. So the first thing is to remember that a Karen is not a person, it's a state.

I believe this. It's a state of mind. So this goes back to something that I remember learning in medical school where there aren't good doctors and bad doctors. That's actually not true. There are, but generally speaking, there are good doctor days and bad doctor days, right? All doctors have good days. All doctors have bad days.

And if you're a patient who encounters a doctor on a bad day, you're going to conclude that this is a bad doctor. The truth is, there's good doctor days and they're bad doctor days. Now, there are bad doctors. There are some doctors who have such a high amount of bad doctor days and make, you know, bad medical decisions on a consistent basis that they're bad doctors. But generally speaking, I think that's true. So remember to try to have a little bit of compassion for the Karen.

Right. So I think this is the kind of thing where, like, making them feel stupid may make you feel good, but it's probably not going to help the situation. that being said, it is important to set good boundaries with a Karen, right? So this is where, like, I personally like it when managers have their employees back and don't reinforce the behavior of the Karen, do something good for the world and don't appease them, and at the same time, treat them with a compassion, right? So this is one of the most challenging things that you can do. So one of the hardest skills to learn is how to be compassionate while maintaining your boundaries.

So the two tend to, like, feel different, right? So for people, people who, when we be nice, we tend to like compromise our boundaries. Oh, yeah, it's okay. Don't worry about it. You don't have to get me something for, you know, my birthday, even though I've gotten new things for your birthday for the last three years. It's okay. Or what we do is we get mad at people and then we lack compassion. So, you know, try to recognize that they're having a bad day, enforce your boundary, hold it. And they may explode. And then, you know, there's nothing else you can do about that, which is why I think that this sort of, you know, you've got to take this with a grain of. of salt. I think for some of the videos that I've seen of like Karen's exploding, like I don't think

that that's, you know, strong behavioral reinforcement, like kicking them out, calling the police, those are going to be your only options. But I do think that the world, you know, maybe you can prevent things from getting to that point by trying to be just a little bit more compassionate. Questions. Is there a guidebook to Karen's? No, I think this video is like the first attempt at something like that, right? Do Karen smell fear? Absolutely. So I know it sounds like a funny question, but I think so. So I think a lot of people, if you look at Cluster B personality disordered people, they're very, very good at detecting particular things in other human beings. So this is kind of a weird study that I've cited before.

So they took a group of people with borderline personality disorder. And what they sort of, when you say can they smell fear, you have no idea how right you are. So they took people with borderline personality disorder and they took, they filmed a regular face that was smiling, going to a frown. So smiling, I hate you. Right? So if you take that video of me smiling to being angry and you split it up into a hundred still photographs and somewhere in the middle is going to be a half smile and half frown, right? So if you take a normal person, isn't a person who doesn't have a personality disorder, their brain cannot detect the anger until you're after the halfway point. So when we're at 51 to 60 percent angry from smiling, when we're less than half smiling and

more than half angry, then a normal brain detects anger. For someone who has BPD, they detects anger at 20 to 30 percent. Right? So this is actually like, it's not, when we say normal brain, I'm not saying their brain is like abnormal or ill or anything. Their brain has grown up to be more sensitive. It's actually, its detection capability is superior to a normal brain. So they can actually detect a negative emotion faster, which can be really, really challenging. It also sort of makes sense, right? So if I'm a narcissist and someone, is going to disrespect me, I can't wait until they're at 51% disrespect to act.

Right? The second I detect 20 or 30%, this is why we say narcissists are sensitive. So if you have a compliment, but you don't emotionally, like, that praise is not authentic or genuine, like the narcissist will detect it. They'll say, like, what's wrong?

Right? And if you all have been in a relationship with someone who's got cluster B, something and they're like, tell me what's wrong. And you're like, nothing's wrong. Everything's fine. Because you're at 51% happy, 60% happy, 70% happy, but they're still able to detect that 20% to 30% unhappiness. Then they keep asking you, what's wrong? What's wrong? What's wrong? And then they push you and push you and push you. You feel more frustrated. And then finally it comes out. And then the person is like, ha ha, I knew it all along. I knew that that nastiness was in there. I knew you were upset with me.

I knew you were mad at me. And so then the behavior. gets reinforced, the bias gets confirmed, and then they do it again. So can Karen smell fear? I think so. I really think so. I think they can detect when a particular behavior will work, right? So if they smell fear, they're going to escalate their bullying because they know it'll work.

And they may be able to detect it 30%, 40% fear, even when you're 70% confident. You're waffling a little bit. They'll smell it and they'll go for it. Okay. My question is when talking about empathy, in a person, is to be someone, be empathic, do they need to be born with it, or is it a skill that most people can learn? Both. So your upbringing will sort of naturally get you to a certain level of empathy. But the cool thing that we've learned is that EQ or emotional quotient,

which is like IQ, can actually be developed. So it's our hypothesis that improvements in our coaching program, the single thing that the coaching program, the single variable that is the most universal about how our coaching program helps people is by boosting EQ. So I constantly ask my girlfriend what's wrong because I feel like she's actually upset. Does that suggest that I might be a narcissist? So remember that the labels are constellations of things, but the thing does not necessarily mean that you have the label. Okay? So for example, in depression, we can see weight gain. But everyone who gains weight does not have depression. Does that make sense? Does that sense? There are all kinds of reasons why you might have depression. There are all kinds of reasons why

you know, if your girlfriend, you constantly ask your girlfriend what's wrong because I feel like she's actually upset. Does that suggest I might be a narcissist? Not really, because there are lots of reasons why you would constantly ask your girlfriend why she's upset. So I would not come away with this with a label. So the diagnosis of a personality disorder certainly can't be done by listening to a dude talking on stream. And even in a clinical setting, generally speaking, requires six months of observation. So the gold standard for diagnosing a personality disorder requires six months of psychiatric observation or treatment. Okay. And why is that? It's because remember that narcissism is a defense mechanism. So everyone has it. So why do you need six months? You need to track someone

over time because you could be catching them at a bad point. When they're under a lot of stress, they may seem narcissistic, they may seem borderline, but that's an effect of the stress. And once the stress goes away, they're kind of back to normal. People who have true personality disorders, which remember is like somewhere on 4.8%, 4 to 7% of the population. So exceedingly small, right? So chances are there's like a 5% chance that you have this. So it's low. 95% chance that you don't have. And so we can sort of respond with these defense mechanisms, but the personality disorder is diagnosed when this is kind of your default state. Can people with ASPD develop or learn empathy? of. So it depends on the person. So in my experience, I've seen two classifications of ASPD,

which is antisocial personality disorder. One is where there's like really something going on in their brain that makes it very, very hard, or I would even say like, damn near impossible to learn empathy. But there are a lot of people who get diagnosed with stuff who are not like that. So this is the other thing to remember about psychiatric diagnoses is they're not like they're patterns that we've recognized. So it's not like some of these binary questions will be yes or no. It's not like a stroke, where a stroke is like a discrete physical thing that we contract to a particular part of the brain and be very predictive about what it's going to do to you.

Whereas for things like ASPD, these are like psychiatrists have made observations. We don't have biopsies. We don't have x-rays. So I'm not saying they're not real things, but they're not as deterministic as other diseases. If you know you have become a sociopath, is there a way to rewire your brain to feel emotions like you should? Yeah, so let's talk about this. So if you know you have become a sociopath, the first question is, how do you know you've become a sociopath? See, I think you all are hopefully making this mistake, because it's a good mistake to make.

So if you've been evaluated for six months or a year by a clinician and they've diagnosed you with antisocial personality disorder and they say you are a sociopath, that's one thing. But a lot of times what happens, this is exactly why we say, like we don't just use. use that medical disclaimer as like a, you know, cover your assing. This is important to understand. Because a lot of people run around diagnosing themselves as sociopaths. Well, how did you come to that conclusion? Well, because I don't feel emotions. So this is exactly what happens. This is what people do is they'll pick one symptom and then they'll arrive at a diagnosis. Oh, because I can't feel emotions, I'm a sociopath. But what you have to remember is that inability to feel emotions has a differential diagnosis. So maybe you're depressed. Maybe you're numb. Maybe you're numb.

Maybe you're using substances. Maybe you're alexathymic. So that's why I'm kind of saying, like, even for people who have come into my office with a diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder, I found that there's actually two groups. One is, like, where there's some of this other stuff going on, like emotional numbness, which over time, like, once we uncover that stuff, then they're able to, like, feel emotions and stuff like that. Whereas the other group, like, really has trouble with that. So I don't really know about that group. Right. So if you say, if you know you have become a sociopath, is there a way to rewire or brain?

I'd say, like, unless you have a really, really good reason, which is, I concluded is not a good reason. If you're using a label of sociopath, that needs to be assigned by someone who knows what it is and knows how to evaluate it from it properly. Not this is what I think a sociopath is. I've watched a thousand videos on YouTube, therefore I know. I'm not saying that your experience doesn't resonate with those things, but that's why differential diagnosis is so important.

I'd say the biggest thing that people miss on the internet is the concept of differential diagnosis.