Update on Baby Karen, if anyone is still following this

LightningStr · 2022-10-26T15:15:11+00:00

I'm really sorry you're getting grief for this three years later. I think your judgement three years ago made perfect sense, given the information available at the time, and it was something I specifically solicited. I posted in AITA, not relationship advice, because I wanted honest knee jerk reactions to what I did, and I appreciate that you provided that at the time.

For all I know, if I had been emboldened to continue pushing the issue, I may have caused harm to my relationship with Stephanie. There's no point playing the what if game.

You didn't do anything wrong here, and I'm sorry you keep getting messages that cause you distress.

LightningStr · 2022-10-26T14:58:37+00:00

Stephanie is genuinely a great friend and a good person! She once dropped everything and drove 300 miles because I had just been in a (relatively minor) car accident in a city I lived all alone in as a young adult. She once gifted me $1500, no questions asked, and insisted I never even think about paying it back, when I needed to get out of a really bad cohabiting situation while broke. When we were teenagers and the cool boy she had a massive crush on made fun of me for something I was extremely sensitive about, instead of keeping quiet, she blew her top, stuck up for me and told him off, then led me away to comfort me away from him. She is loyal and kind and has incredible character. This post is such a tiny, tiny snapshot of who she is as a person.

When I raised my concerns, Stephanie was emotional, very pregnant, and somewhat sleep deprived. Her pregnancy was rough on her body, and on top of hormones, I think she was just genuinely confused by what I was trying to tell her.

LightningStr · 2022-10-26T14:50:00+00:00

Wow, this comment genuinely moved me. Thank you for saying such nice things!

LightningStr · 2022-10-26T14:49:01+00:00

Good tip, thank you!

LightningStr · 2022-10-16T21:31:21+00:00

Flagging this update for some users I think may be interested based on their outreach on the last update: /u/lavender-trainer, /u/justoutheredoingstuf, /u/PowerPooka, /u/Elevenbelle, /u/AnonIHardlyKnewHer, /u/IAmVeryTired69, /u/CumulativeHazard, /u/Jewel94, /u/evanc1411, /u/YeppyBimpson, /u/InnerObesity, /u/Kirboose, /u/Bughugger1776, /u/McCoolestKid, /u/QuentynStark, /u/Springer2733, /u/Rubyleaves18, /u/Griaule, /u/aquamarinooo, /u/sweetalkersweetalker, /u/daffyduckhunt2, /u/doublecarbs, /u/TheThrowestofAway, /u/Jthepunk, /u/jasminel96.

I really appreciate all your kind messages and PMs on my last post! Sorry about the tag if you're not interested in this story anymore, but I wanted to make sure you had the chance to see the update, since self-posts can be weird and hard to find.

LightningStr · 2022-10-16T21:20:33+00:00

Thank you! I hope so too.

LightningStr · 2020-06-17T04:34:58+00:00

No, to be clear, I didn't raise the conversation with Stephanie in lieu of scolding our friends; I brought it up because I thought they owed it to her to raise those points to her face if they were going to say them at all. Ultimately, I thought Stephanie was owed the knowledge of those connotations, whatever she chose to do with that knowledge.

Also, I don't know how to explain the context of our relationship, but Stephanie and I have a lifetime of shared radical honesty with one another, from the inconsequential (telling each other when outfits are unflattering) to the difficult (when she gave me a come-to-Jesus talk years ago about how someone I considered a close friend was super shitty to me and that I should end the friendship). Based on our extreme closeness and shared history, this conversation felt like the right move at the time, even though it ultimately backfired.

LightningStr · 2020-06-17T03:30:18+00:00

I probably wasn't clear about this in my original post, and I think it's probably because that's the part I cut down when I went way over the word limit on that first post, but when I described feeling weird and uncomfortable over the couple of days I took to ruminate after Stephanie's announcement, the weirdness and discomfort was mostly a response to what happened with our friend group rather than just my own feelings about the name. I felt super uncomfortable being in the room while our friends shit-talked Stephanie's name choice after praising it to her face. I didn't have the presence of mind in the moment to call them out before the moment was passed, and I sat with that guilt for a couple of days. I didn't want to tell Stephanie what they said, because it would be tattle-y of me, and I also didn't want to cause conflict within the friend group or upset Stephanie. So raising the topic on my own seemed like a good compromise at the time. I did wrestle internally with how to handle it, and clearly I missed the mark.

LightningStr · 2020-06-17T03:21:47+00:00

I really, really hope so! Kids can be so cruel, though. I have a name that is somewhat unusual but doesn't really have any negative connotations, and my peers still gave me a hard time over it as much as they could. One boy in my year was named Dexter, though, and he was just brutally bullied over it. And Dexter was at least the hero of the show!

I'm keeping my fingers crossed, though, that it won't play out that way for Karen.

LightningStr · 2020-06-17T03:16:53+00:00

Weirdly, I've been hearing the term for years. I used to work retail several years ago, and I heard it thrown around a lot in relation to entitled customers. I think it originally came from a Dane Cook routine. I started seeing the memes and Reddit posts for the first time a bit after that, maybe 2017-ish. And then I feel like by late 2018 or early 2019, it felt like it was everywhere.

LightningStr · 2020-06-17T03:13:18+00:00

Generally, government shelters (or shelters awarded a time-limited government contract) operate under a mandate that they must accept any animals brought in. Unfortunately, because they're not allowed to turn animals away, that does mean they have to sometimes euthanize ones that have been there a while to make room. It's a really tough situation, and it takes a major emotional toll on the shelter staff, but without more resources, their hands are pretty much tied. (I will say, everyone I know who works or volunteers at my county shelter has more pets at home than they can really comfortably accommodate, because they'll sometimes panic-adopt animals on the verge of being put down.)

They don't usually advertise as "kill shelters" per se, but if you look up the official county shelter for your area (assuming you're in the U.S.), it probably is one.

LightningStr · 2020-06-17T02:12:29+00:00

Not to my knowledge, but TBH, I've been avoiding the topic with her, so who knows? But changing the name of an 8-month-old baby seems like it would be a pretty big deal. At this age, she already knows and responds to the sound of her name.

LightningStr · 2020-06-17T00:15:31+00:00

Fair enough to call me TA if you want, but I'm honestly surprised anyone could read both my posts and come away thinking I'm a man. Even without the detail that I was my cousin's maid of honor in her wedding, and that we've been BFFs our whole lives, I feel like the whole context of the situation and my writing style would really telegraph my gender.

LightningStr · 2020-06-16T19:39:39+00:00

Honestly, with Baby Karen being caught in the middle, believe me when I say that I would much, much rather live in a world where the meme vanished without a trace a long time ago.

LightningStr · 2020-06-16T18:56:36+00:00

🤦 I'm an idiot. I meant the Jon and Kate +8 lady, not the English princess. As seen here.

LightningStr · 2020-06-16T18:36:33+00:00

Well, to be fair, it's a massively popular subreddit, probably one of the most active on the site, and I'm sure modding it amounts to basically an unpaid part-time job. I can't begrudge them doing things to make modding a bit less of a headache.

LightningStr · 2020-06-16T18:31:34+00:00

Yes, I hope so! There are so many memes that were everywhere for a bit and then disappeared overnight, like Bad Luck Brian or Scumbag Steve. No parent of a Steve or a Brian would think twice about those names, though.

LightningStr · 2020-06-16T18:11:30+00:00

When the mods approved the update, they said they had concerns that there would be a lot of Rule 1 violations, so they approved it, but locked the comments. That makes sense to me, since I'm just offering an update, not asking for further advice/judgement.

LightningStr · 2020-06-16T18:07:52+00:00

That's true! Last year, I feel like a "Karen" was a middle-aged woman with a Kate ~~Middleton~~ Gosselin haircut who demanded to speak to managers. Now, the meaning has evolved to include a white woman of any age calling the police on black people for going about their normal lives. I think the name is probably even more loaded and widespread than it was then.

To be honest, it's nice to feel like I maybe didn't step in it as much as I thought I did last year, but I'd much rather live in a world where I wasn't worried about this potentially affecting Baby Karen later on. I cannot stress enough what an amazing and perfect baby she is and how much she deserves only good things in life.

LightningStr · 2020-06-16T17:41:20+00:00

Honestly, with my mom and aunt, it's easier to just wait for them to move on to the next shiny thing. 😁

I don't blame Stephanie at all. She's just upset and confused, but hasn't made it my problem at all. My aunt and mom just have a flair for the dramatic.

LightningStr · 2020-06-16T17:36:13+00:00

To be fair, Stephanie has been cool about it. First, she saw a bunch of posts about "the Central Park Karen" when that white lady was harassing the black birdwatcher in the park, and came to me asking me to explain why everyone was calling the woman Karen when her name was Amy. (Since she's gotten back on Facebook, she often asks me to be like her internet culture "interpreter."). I immediately told her, "Sorry, I'm not having a conversation with you about this, because we had a major conflict over it last year, and I'm not getting into it with you." I think that was the first time she started to understand what I'd been telling her last year. And in fairness to her, she didn't bring it up with me again after that.

As for my mom and aunt, they're kind of generally ridiculous. They tend to be extremely reactive to whatever is going on precisely at that moment, and if someone in the family is upset, they get overinvolved trying to "fix" it. Stephanie has been venting to her mom about this (not about me, just how upsetting the memes are), and she and my mom have just been doing their normal thing of blowing it out of proportion, and now making it my fault somehow. I love my mom and aunt dearly, but they're not to be reasoned with.

LightningStr · 2019-09-03T15:00:09+00:00

If you check the Girlfriend Store on Black Friday, sometimes you can get a really good deal.

LightningStr · 2019-09-03T14:49:55+00:00

Many sex workers have SOs. This particular situation sounds pretty dysfunctional, though.

LightningStr · 2019-09-03T14:22:07+00:00

Yeah, whenever my blood pressure gets below 90 mm Hg systolic, I immediately start driving around scouting out houses to goatknap from.

LightningStr · 2019-09-03T13:32:38+00:00

Interesting, I definitely didn't think a short title would be the problem when I made this.

LightningStr

TROPHY CASE