{"id":66974,"date":"2021-10-08T01:00:13","date_gmt":"2021-10-08T05:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=66974"},"modified":"2022-04-07T09:54:13","modified_gmt":"2022-04-07T13:54:13","slug":"qotd-coping-with-the-karens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2021\/10\/08\/qotd-coping-with-the-karens\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Coping with the Karens"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:left; padding: 0px 15px 10px 0px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-48672\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png 400w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-50x50.png 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a>You saw this all the time with COVID. Karen obviously didn&#8217;t give a crap about the actual science, but she loved Teh Science (TM), by which she meant &#8220;I get to boss you around.&#8221; Even though I knew better, I still tried <em>arguing<\/em> with Karen back in the early days. And then it dawned on me: Not only is arguing with her not changing her mind, she&#8217;s actually, almost literally, <em>getting off on it<\/em>. She hadn&#8217;t had this much attention in years!!<\/p>\n<p>So then I changed tactics. Even the most draconian jurisdictions had mask exemptions for certain kinds of disability, so I became &#8220;disabled&#8221;. When Karen started shouting at me, I simply replied, calmly and quietly: &#8220;I have a disability; I&#8217;m exempt.&#8221; That worked 95% of the time. But for the hardcore Karens, I had to break out the big guns. Some of them were bitchy enough to actually ask me &#8220;what disability?&#8221;, and that&#8217;s when it was time to take sweet, sweet revenge.<\/p>\n<p>See, as Martinian notes, the coin of the realm with Karen is <em>attention<\/em>. She wants fawning adulation, of course, but she&#8217;ll happily take negative attention, because as I&#8217;ve written many times re: The <acronym title=\"Basic College Girl\">BCG<\/acronym>, having &#8220;h8rz&#8221; on social media just confirms how awesome and fascinating you are. The only kind of attention Karen can&#8217;t stand is the kind that cuts her off from the group. &#8220;Disability&#8221; is the perfect way to flip that on her. For your information, I have PTSD. I watched my buddies die in my arms at Chung King and Chow Mein and Al-Kahaliq and Fuckaduckabad. How dare you dishonor my sacrifice, Karen? How <em>dare<\/em> you?!?<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s grossly undignified on both sides, but all&#8217;s fair in civil war.<\/p>\n<p>Severian, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rottenchestnuts.com\/r-e-s-p-e-c-t\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;R-E-S-P-E-C-T&#8221;, <em>Rotten Chestnuts<\/em><\/a>, 2021-06-23.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You saw this all the time with COVID. Karen obviously didn&#8217;t give a crap about the actual science, but she loved Teh Science (TM), by which she meant &#8220;I get to boss you around.&#8221; Even though I knew better, I still tried arguing with Karen back in the early days. And then it dawned on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[66,57,41],"tags":[1202,139,1462,1363],"class_list":["post-66974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-science","category-humour","category-quotations","tag-epidemic","tag-psychology","tag-severian","tag-wuhancoronavirus"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-hqe","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66974"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66974\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68860,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66974\/revisions\/68860"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}