Annoyed young woman looking at smartphone, potentially reading the Twitter comments about the Karen … [+]
They call themselves #BidenBoys and say they’re discriminated against as members of the JLGBTQ (J for journalist). Now, they’ve posted a poll on Twitter asking if people think the use of the term ‘Karen’ should be banned. Journalist Excellence Worldwide, a self-proclaimed journalist advocacy group, tweeted out their query yesterday: “The term ‘Karen’ is being used as a sexist and racist slur. Considering this is an equivalent of the n-word for white women, should it be banned on Twitter?”
Before you get heated, yes, this is a parody.
A video posted today by “Dustin Levitt” helped to dispel any beliefs that the poll or the account could be real. Levitt threatened, in a very Karen-like way, to press charges “against anyone retweeting or sharing our recent poll or, other content for that matter, with the intent to incite harm or harassment to our team or any journalist.” Twitter responded as Twitter does best — with piss-takes.
Dustin Levitt is a pseudonym used by an Oregon-based anti-leftist prankster who started the Boston Antifa group as a parody of actual anti-fascist groups. Levitt and his partner “Quinn” have made headlines in the past when in 2017, Boston Antifa falsely took credit for an anti-racism banner hung up in Fenway Park. The Boston Antifa Twitter account, which has since been banned, also tweeted out a pair of juxtaposed photos of a group of tailgating Bills fans with the caption “NFL fans 2015” and a group of young men and women posing in front of a mirror with the caption “New NFL,” with the words: “More gender inclusivity with NFL fans and gluten free options at stadiums” and the hashtag #TakeAKnee. They geotagged the tweet in Vladivostok, Russia, and probably sat back and cackled as they stirred the pot.
Rest assured, the people behind Journalist Excellence Worldwide don’t believe what they say. As MassLive reported in 2017, “Brandon and Alexis, whose Antifa characters ‘Dustin’ and ‘Quinn’ opine on subjects like how fidget spinners can trigger PTSD in hurricane victims, said as much last April in an interview with right-wing media personality Gavin McInnes.”
When asked if they were hoping more people would jump on the “ban Karen bandwagon,” thus making a mockery of touchy leftists and social justice warriors, whoever runs the Journalist Excellence Worldwide account (presumably “Levitt” but the respondent did not confirm nor deny their identity) replied, “That was one of those questions with an answer I already knew. It’s not. People are dying in New York City right now. I find all this dedication to a Twitter poll about the word ‘Karen’ to be somewhat offensive.”
Offensive, sure, but you can’t put the n-word anywhere in a tweet and not expect a rapid response from the id of the internet. But then again, Levitt did expect it, and like a jealous lover who pushes their partner into the arms of another, he’s played out a self-fulfilling prophecy. The question is, why? Levitt, or whoever was replying to Twitter DMs, only said, “People should view the sources these things come from and why it might benefit those people to label an ‘enemy’ the worst possible thing they can or create justification for doing so. Left wing vs right wing is almost an outdated dichotomy at this point if you look at who is now labeled either far-right or far-left. It’s insane.”
Regardless, the response to the poll has been entertaining, at best.
It’s also been heated and righteous, with critics pointing out that the difference is that you can spell Karen without flinching, but you can’t (as I’ll now prove) spell the n-word.
But more than anything, it’s just sparked up more Karen memes in a day than Twitter has likely ever seen. At the very least, the unnecessary virality of this weakly stoked race flame is a distraction from the actual virality of COVID-19. Now, back to crying about the state of public health and hand-wringing over the economy.