4 ms·

As a person who never lived in an English-speaking country, associating Karen (or any name really) with such a bad personality has always made my "be nice" alar

As a person who never lived in an English-speaking country, associating Karen (or any name really) with such a bad personality has always made my "be nice" alarm bells ring. Truly sorry for the digression, just wanted to know what others think, and not blaming you or anything. Spoken languages are weird, even weirder than cryptocurrency contracts with accidental bad logic - the weird logic in spoken languages seems somehow desired.

deleted 5y ago
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DangitBobby 5y ago
You are right, of course. Imagine how shitty is must be to be named Karen and have millions of people one day start using your name as an insult. Just one of the hundreds of ways the internet mob steamrolls over people.
- theshrike79 5y ago
  It wasn't fun being an Adolf in the beginning of the previous century =) These things tend to happen.
- nlitened 5y ago
  That had happened to Dicks before though.
- ineedasername 5y ago
  >hundreds of ways the internet mob steamrolls over people. There's lots of names that have acquired negative stereotypes before. In my lifetime the name "Mike" at one point basically meant asshole (not so much anymore) and "Bob" basically meant boring, and "Patel" was a catchall negative for anyone from India. There's even research on some of the nuances of the phenomenon. [1] This isn't an aspect of internet mobs, it's an aspect of human nature, or at least society in general. The Internet may shine a light on our flaws, and provide some new outlets for them, but it doesn't really create new ones, we brought them with us, like settlers from Europe going to the "New World" to escape the plague only to find they brought it with them. [1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00224545.1996.9713993?journalCode=vsoc20 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00224545.1996.97...
Jach 5y ago
It's just some lingo, dog. (Not actually calling you a dog.)
wpietri 5y ago
People are able to distinguish between "Karen" and "a Karen". It's no more of a problem than my dad had with people distinguishing between his name "Bill" and "a bill".
_lnwk 5y ago
Unrelated, but I live in Poland and there's similar thing related to names. Stereotypical Janusz and Grażyna are boomers, Karyna means a poor woman that's not exactly educated, and so on. It is not only American phenomenon.
alpaca128 5y ago
I don't live in an English country either and we have our own equivalent male and female names. This is basically a common stereotype being so universally seen as negative that it becomes an insult. Not great because some people actually have that name (and most of them don't deserve this association), but then again a person's annoying behaviour isn't the worst reason for negative labels. Like always you can insult and hurt people with "clean" language and use vulgar words in non-offensive ways. But say what you want, I'll keep calling "smart" technology trash ;)
- antifa 5y ago
  "Smart" these days often feels like it really means "smart enough to subvert the user's interests".

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DangitBobby 5y ago

You are right, of course. Imagine how shitty is must be to be named Karen and have millions of people one day start using your name as an insult. Just one of the hundreds of ways the internet mob steamrolls over people.

theshrike79 5y ago
It wasn't fun being an Adolf in the beginning of the previous century =) These things tend to happen.
nlitened 5y ago
That had happened to Dicks before though.
ineedasername 5y ago
>hundreds of ways the internet mob steamrolls over people. There's lots of names that have acquired negative stereotypes before. In my lifetime the name "Mike" at one point basically meant asshole (not so much anymore) and "Bob" basically meant boring, and "Patel" was a catchall negative for anyone from India. There's even research on some of the nuances of the phenomenon. [1] This isn't an aspect of internet mobs, it's an aspect of human nature, or at least society in general. The Internet may shine a light on our flaws, and provide some new outlets for them, but it doesn't really create new ones, we brought them with us, like settlers from Europe going to the "New World" to escape the plague only to find they brought it with them. [1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00224545.1996.9713993?journalCode=vsoc20 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00224545.1996.97...

Jach 5y ago

It's just some lingo, dog. (Not actually calling you a dog.)

wpietri 5y ago

People are able to distinguish between "Karen" and "a Karen". It's no more of a problem than my dad had with people distinguishing between his name "Bill" and "a bill".

_lnwk 5y ago

Unrelated, but I live in Poland and there's similar thing related to names. Stereotypical Janusz and Grażyna are boomers, Karyna means a poor woman that's not exactly educated, and so on. It is not only American phenomenon.

alpaca128 5y ago

I don't live in an English country either and we have our own equivalent male and female names. This is basically a common stereotype being so universally seen as negative that it becomes an insult. Not great because some people actually have that name (and most of them don't deserve this association), but then again a person's annoying behaviour isn't the worst reason for negative labels. Like always you can insult and hurt people with "clean" language and use vulgar words in non-offensive ways. But say what you want, I'll keep calling "smart" technology trash ;)

antifa 5y ago
"Smart" these days often feels like it really means "smart enough to subvert the user's interests".