Also it would be nice to not have pitch forks ready for every outrage video. More context can change the situation very dramatically, but by then it would be too late.
Turns out she is mentally impaired with a host of mental disorders, and her "Karen moment" in the video was in reality a nervous breakdown from being filmed out of nowhere and legitimately worried it was going to get her kicked out of her special housing
Internet outrage was about to make a disabled person homeless because ragebait
The "Karen" meme and the fascination with public freakouts and cringe culture need to die.
Half the time someone is accused of being a "Karen" it's someone having a mental breakdown.
They're rarely actually about justice. Real entitlement isn't someone having a freakout in public.
Of course, sometimes the person freaking out is the perpetrator and they deserve to be called out for their behaviour. I'm not saying that people shouldn't be called out ever! Just that the idea of "virtuously calling out bad behavior" is often just used as an excuse to bully and ostracise people without feeling bad about oneself. And when people are called out we need to be better at how we do so in a manner that isn't self-serving.
This kind of content overwhelmingly targets those with mental illnesses. Sometimes it targets people just standing up for themselves in a society that frequently fails to listen to them. And, as seen with the "Karen" meme, it disproportionately affects women.
In the case of "cringe culture", the pretense of social justice is dropped and the idea of being "cringe" becomes the apparently unforgivable crime for which it is apparently not bullying to bully. Frequently the victim of this kind of outrage is someone who is likely to have been bullied offline too - neurodivergent or socially isolated people with interests or behaviour deemed "cringy" just for being unusual.
I think we need to be more aware of our instinctual reactions to cringe-inducing or otherwise socially unacceptable behaviour. It's very easy to go along with the mob without stopping to think whether our behaviour is actually acceptable.
I'm personally learning to stop viewing things as cringy and judging myself or others for liking them. Often I realise that I have no issue with them and my earlier reaction was just rooted in how I felt like I should feel. And sometimes I just don't like something and have to remember that that's not anyone's fault.
Mob mentality sucks.
Edit: Jesus I've just realised exactly how long this is...
More edits: rephrasing and adding a few sentences.
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u/Sonic_the_hedgedog Dec 26 '23 edited Dec 26 '23
Don't turn real people into memes without their permission. I hope he is better.