I’m not a Karen; don’t you dare call me a Karen.
Sometimes I think we are all in the Matrix, sleeping in our goo filed tubes, controlled by a computer with a warped sense of humor. Stuff like this just could not happen in a real world.
You’ve probably heard the term “Karen.” I don’t know why that name was chosen to represent this particular type of person, and I’m sure people named Karen hate that it was, but here is the definition of Karen from the Urban Dictionary. I’m just quoting here; don’t kill the messenger:
Karens take everything wrong, with an over-entitled western woman attitude, cranked up a thousand percent. Karens have developed their own unique characteristics /antics, including but not limited to:
— Reveling in making the life of retail workers a living hell by constantly making a scene over nothing and demanding to “speak to the manager” (a near universal battle cry among Karens).
— Threatening to sue someone for a minor offense they may or may not have committed and may or may not have even involved Karen at all.
Now to our caller (with the facts changed slightly to protect privacy).
We’ll call her Karen.
She had food delivered to her home, and was mad when the order somehow deviated from what she was expecting. She took to Nextdoor.com, and posted the name and picture of the delivery person (let’s call him Bill), suggesting that anyone who ordered from the business should ask that Bill not be allowed to deliver their order. Bill was a scourge on the neighborhood, and people had to be warned.
Someone responded that she was being a Karen. We’ll call him Joe.
Karen called, wanting to sue Joe for calling her a Karen. She had looked up the meaning of Karen, and she was clearly not a Karen, so she wanted to sue Joe for defamation for this false statement about her. I listened patiently, and told her that it was unfortunate that Joe had called her a Karen, but that it was an imprecise term and matter of opinion, and certainly would not support a claim for defamation. She began screaming at me, saying I did not know what I was talking about, that she knew for a fact that what he said was defamatory, and hung up.
She called back a few minutes later, telling my partner that she wanted to talk to my supervisor.
This is another reason you don’t have a viable defamation action, Karen. Truth is an absolute defense.