How ‘Karen’ became a defining meme of the pandemic

By now you’ve probably heard of a ‘Karen.’ She’s the entitled white woman who would call the cops on black kids selling lemonade without a permit, or yell at a waiter over a minor inconvenience. The Karen meme has been around for awhile, but it’s really evolved since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. While there’s been some controversy over it, the meme perfectly captures the tensions of this moment and it’s become a sharp critique of a specific kind of villain that we’ve seen emerge from our new reality. Today, we’re talking about all of this with Kaitlyn Tiffany, a staff writer at The Atlantic who recently published a deep dive on Karens.

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