Can you tell a real Karen from a spoof?

Late on the evening of July 4, her family asleep, she opened her laptop and began searching through viral Karen videos to get some ideas for the dance. She didn’t like what she found.

A Karen, according to the top definition on Urban Dictionary, is the “stereotypical name associated with rude, obnoxious and insufferable middle aged white women.” The many, many videos Stoutt-Brown might have stumbled upon include Karens throwing tantrums at the prospect of wearing a mask when leaving the house or calling the police on people of color over minor infractions.

“I was embarrassed and heartsick that these women are representing my culture, so to speak,” she said. “So I just slammed that laptop shut and decided go to have some fun.”

The resulting fun came in the form of “The Karen,” a quick freestyle dance that includes finger-wagging (with the displayed text “My order isn’t right / Somebody’s gonna pay / I want to see the manager!”) and a mock phone call (“You dumped leaves in my yard! / Hello, my life is being threatened”), along with some fist pumping (“I’m important!”).

One week after the dance’s debut, it has been viewed more than 6.6 million times. “And the really cool thing is most of the comments were positive,” she said.

That’s not particularly surprising, considering satirical videos poking fun at Karens have become almost as popular as the viral videos of Karens themselves. A main reason these spoofs are having a moment is that Karen videos are increasingly tied to high-stakes political issues. A recent video showed a woman refusing to wear a mask at Trader Joe’s and screaming at the employees insisting she do so. Another showed a woman calling the police on a black man who asked her to leash her dog in accordance with Central Park’s rules. At a time when many Americans are pushing for both coronavirus prevention efforts and racial justice, Karens are often the antithesis of those efforts — and comedy about them can be a way of venting frustration.

“It’s a good point of gathering people around, people who don’t want to get sick, people who understand that other people can be crazy at times,” said Brandon Wink, the editor in chief of Meme Insider magazine. “Everything culminates well in regard to Karens.”

The trick to making a successful spoof lies in highlighting the inherent preposterousness of the situations.

“I see these Karen videos … and I think, ‘How can I take this a step further and make it completely ridiculous?’ ” said Daniel Bennett, who works in advertising in Los Angeles and has amassed more than 300,000 followers on TikTok — in part through his popular videos targeting Karens.

In one, which has more than 2.8 million views, he successfully applies to change his name to Karen after asking to speak to the name-changer’s supervisor. A follow-up finds him earning a renewal of his Karen license after calling the police and the Food and Drug Administration on children who set up a lemonade stand without a permit.

“A lot of it is playing on how easily solved a situation could have been, in retrospect,” Bennett said. “Everything that’s happening with Karens around the world, there’s so many easy resolutions to the instances and interactions, but the way that they escalate is really where the comedy comes into it.”

Lines can blur pretty quickly when you’re parodying something that’s already inherently ridiculous, as Atlanta-based standup comedian Blaire Erskine learned on her own trip into the Karensphere. Days after video surfaced of a man refusing to wear a mask in a Florida Costco and screaming “I feel threatened!” at a fellow customer who filmed his meltdown, Erskine had an idea: Wouldn’t it be funny to make a little video pretending to be his wife?

“He was not scared at all, were you babe?” she asks in the video, which she shared on Twitter and YouTube. “No, see, ‘I feel threatened’ is actually our family’s crest.”

Erskine didn’t expect the video to rack up more than 5.5 million views, and she certainly didn’t expect that nearly half the people who commented on it would think it was real, including comedian Tommy Chong, who tweeted it with the message, “This explains everything! She doesn’t remember what she said when told to wear a mask! We’ll be seeing her again! With stories of the virus!”

“If that were a serious video that I saw, I’d be angry too. But it’s like they’re too angry to see that it’s a joke,” Erskine said, adding that there might be a silver lining. “I hope people are like, ‘Wow, she looks like such an idiot. I never want to be like her. I’m going to wear a mask the next time I go to Target.’”

The Karenverse, after all, is a surrealist wonderland where reality and fiction blur into each other — and the world has fallen down the rabbit hole and through the looking glass.

TikToks by comedian and actor Jake Hunter, which show a woman becoming increasingly angry with Hunter for parking too close to her car, highlight this strange state of affairs. The videos grow increasingly absurdist, to the point where she tries to conduct a citizen’s arrest four hours after calling the police, who never arrive. Days later, the woman in the videos created her own TikTok account to yell at “Jake Hunter Official.”

For weeks, commenters on the videos have argued whether the incident was a staged stunt or sincere squabbling. It certainly smacks of satire, and if it is, part of the joke appears to be that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to determine the difference between the spoofs and the real deal. (Hunter did not respond to requests for comment.)

While the main reason for parodying the Karens is to get laughs, doing so may actually build bridges. Stoutt-Brown said her video blowing up “has broadened my world” by connecting her with people she never would have met otherwise.

“Growing up in a rural community in east Tennessee, I’m just not around many people of color. I’m just not,” she said. But as her TikTok went viral, she began learning the true damage a Karen can cause, especially as she listened to people of color reacting to the part of the dance where she pretends to call the cops. “I have relationships with more people of color now than I’ve ever had in my life. I understand now why people of another race think the way they do about the world right now. I understand their fears.”

“That’s the beginning of healing for a nation that’s broken,” she said, adding, “When I first got on TikTok, I wondered if God could somehow use it to extend my ministry, and he has.”

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