I’m in Philadelphia and we’ve been under these stay at home orders since March 12. If I’m remembering this right. And then a couple weeks after that, they said like you need to be wearing masks if you’re going to be out interacting with the public. And so I would be out like walking my dog or whatever. And I would see people not wearing masks. And I would see them on the bus. I would see them on the sidewalk. I would see guys like spitting on the sidewalk which is disgusting and gross and don’t do that. And you know normally like sidewalks spitting like irritates me. But when the coronavirus stuff started happening. I was just like, that was a health hazard that is disgusting. Don’t you put it. Don’t you care. I don’t care. And you know, realizing that this probably wasn’t like the most productive place to put my rage. And it really was rage like I was angry. I remain angry. Yesterday I was walking down the sidewalk and you know now we’re however many weeks into this and like everybody knows like you’re supposed to wear a mask right. Yes Yes. So like I’m walking down the sidewalk and there’s a young man and a young woman and they’re real fit and they’re jogging and they both have these like things around their waist. So like their dogs are attached to them. The two of them are taking up every inch of the sidewalk and they’re not wearing masks and they’re not moving and I’m like, oh like, how is your exercise more important than like you know you don’t know if I’m immunocompromised or like if I’m living with somebody who’s elderly like if it’s just it makes me it makes me angry. And it makes me want to like do the Karen thing, which is like, I need to talk to your manager. You know like either confronting the person directly or snitching which is a lot of what I’ve been seeing going on. I’m sure like a lot of you guys like me are on next door dot.com or like Facebook neighborhood groups. And you’ll see the you know I saw somebody in the dog park doing this or I saw somebody on at the bus stop doing that or getting the police involved, which is another option that my fellow Philadelphians have been exercising like people call the cops on each other. And that’s happening all over the country. It’s happening all over the world. My column mentioned there was this case in Australia where a couple had posted pictures of like you know, here we are hanging out at some like monument or something. And it’s like, hey, that’s supposed to be close. You’re not supposed to be there. What are you doing. And it turns out it was an old picture it was like a picture that was taken nine months ago. But somebody called the police on these people and the police went to their house and you know made sure that they weren’t like breaking their quarantine. I am going to see if I have any comments. I’m I’ll go to my let’s see. No, I do not. They do not appear to have any if anybody wants to say anything. I think you can. I think you can say something to me if you want to. If not, I am going to I’m going to dive right into some of the things that people had to say about my piece. Yikes as a novelist I’ve gotten really, really good about not reading comments like, I don’t go to Amazon. I don’t go to good reads. I just feel like it’s none of my business. Like I wrote as well as I could. And I put it in the world. And I’m going to let the good. Let it speak for itself. And I’m not going to like obsess and I just really think it’s very mentally healthy. But in this case, they read the comments for me. So here we go. So Adrian Mitch machete at a machete if you’re there. Hello be the Karen, you want to see in the world. Thank you, Jennifer Weiner I hate healing caught between pleading with somebody thereby risking anti foreigner vitriol and feeling pressure to report them via government app community snitch. That’s a real thing. Like you know what are we supposed to do here. What are we as responsible citizens who want to keep ourselves safe who want to keep our children safe. Our older parents state our community safe like you know how are we supposed to do this. And I went and talked to some experts. Hashtag reporting. And I found out that I spoke to a sociologist who said, no surprise confronting people is rarely effective like it might feel cathartic in the moment to get up and somebody’s grill and be like, hey, don’t you know you’re supposed to do or don’t you think you should or why aren’t you or you know whatever confrontational language you want to use. It doesn’t help. It just gets them angrier. It gets them to dig in more. And the expert that I who I spoke to suggested it’s not exactly speaking to somebody’s manager. It’s a little bit of a twist on that where, for example, if you go to the grocery store. If you’ve go to Whole Foods, for example, and you see that there people aren’t wearing masks or wearing gloves or aren’t you know enforcing social distancing, the way that you think they should like yelling at an employee is only going to probably get the employee to yell back at you. And what this expert suggested is go on social media and don’t snitch on the person go to the company and say, hey, at business don’t you think you should get somebody else to join. Yes, hello. You know don’t you think you should keep your people safer like, don’t you think you should keep your workers safe or like you know which it makes a lot of sense when you think about it, it’s hard you remember in the moment. Because like it’s all that I can do not to yell at these people and like you know. And I live in fear of being a Karen. OK I am a I’m a middle aged white lady here like it is my nightmare being a Karen and which leads us to another aspect of this whole situation that I wanted to discuss, which is like, why are Karen’s lawyer Karen’s parents like how did how did that happen. And somebody wrote as a real life. Karen can I tell you that having my name associated with obnoxious self centered behavior as not is not at all amusing ever since the Karen meme took off a few years ago, I become very self-conscious of expressing public disapproval or anger even when it’s well served not saying that it’s appropriate to be rude, but I feel like I’m shrinking into myself avoiding being pegged as one of those carrots being a mostly invisible middle aged woman is difficult enough already. So I feel you. I feel you fellow middle aged woman, you know. And honestly like speaking as a Jennifer like I kind of feel like we dodged the Jennifer’s among us dogs a little bit of a bullet with this little thing like it could’ve been Jennifer right. Like there’s certainly plenty of Jennifer’s who also would like to speak to your manager. But there’s a lot of talk about like is it sexist to use the term. Karen is it racist to use the term Karen which is actually something that I saw kind of making the rounds of Twitter a couple of weeks ago. Maybe you guys saw it too or somebody said like I find this term sexist and racist and classist and ages and many, many, many of the big and, you know, as somebody who thinks about sexism a lot and about ageism a lot these days. I celebrated by 50th birthday in quarantine rule who was exactly the birthday. I dreamed of. I didn’t have to do anything. I just I didn’t have to like how people sing happy birthday to me at a restaurant right. But you know, I think a lot about the Karen of it all. And like, where’s the term for middle aged men who want to speak to somebody’s manager like, why don’t we scroll for comments. Wait I have these comments there are no comments are there. You guys can comment. You’re welcome to talk to me. I am here for you here for you. So in terms of like is Karen is is Karen a sexist term. Is it a racist term because Karen, I guess gathered currency first in the black community where there was Becky which was sort of a term for her like you know, a white a white woman who was sort of feeling her privilege and then it Karen is like the older version of that. And like I read that the difference between a Becky and a Karen is a Becky is somebody who pretends she has no privilege she just doesn’t even see it whereas Karen is somebody who is aware of her pregnant privilege. But uses it for evil instead of good. Like instead of using her privilege as sort of you know elevate others or make the world more fair she just uses it to make sure that she can still use that expired like Bed Bath Beyond coupon even though she really shouldn’t. So I SKUs the donor. I think a lot about, you know, how Karen’s become Karen’s because I like I said, I think that the term had been around. But I think that certainly I started hearing about it when there was barbecue Becky and permit patty neither of whom were parents but be more specific don’t be an Eric Trump. That’s a pretty good one. Don’t be an Eric right. Oh, god I just. Whenever somebody calls Don Junior on Iraq the president’s large adult sons like I just think that is in the large, large adult sons Moutier. Jennifer OK. So barbecue Becky permit candy. And in both cases, these were middle aged white women who saw black people doing something that they felt was not OK. And got the police involved. And with barbecue Becky it was there were people having barbecue in a place where they you know they technically should not have been having a barbecue would permit patty was there was a young black girl selling bottled water without a permit. And she’s like, you need a permit. So you know, I feel like many stereotypes or insults there is there’s always that like little kernel of real to it. And in the case of the characters like you know there have certainly been and we’ve all seen examples middle aged women behaving badly or using their power using their power for trivial stuff. I would say because you know how do reproductively call out our relatives who do this. That is an excellent, excellent question. And boy thank goodness. I don’t have to deal with my mom not believing this because I. That is something that I’ve been paying a lot of attention to is people whose parents watch nothing but Fox News and don’t think that this is real. And I don’t know what you do like. I have a friend whose mom went lives in Florida and went and got a pedicure. And my friend was like, why are you getting a pedicure and she’s like, well, they’re open and I want to support them. I don’t want them to go out of business. I want them to be there when this is all over and I’m like, OK, that’s. You know that is a lovely thought. But crap execution because you know you don’t want to put them at risk. You don’t want to put yourself at risk. So what do you do with parents who aren’t listening. Well, what I learned from reporting the story is that confrontation doesn’t work. So you can’t just say mom, you’re wrong. That’s not going to help. I guess you know and you also can’t you know as you would do if you went to a store and saw employees not doing things correctly, you can’t go on Twitter and say, hey, at Home Depot. Hey apple foods hey, at Acme or Kroger or whatever. You know I saw your employees doing y, and z And I wanted you to be aware of it because I’m sure you want them to be safe like your parents don’t have a boss. I don’t think so. Like what would I what would I do if I had elderly relatives. I don’t know. I mean, I think that I would use whatever leverage. I had, which in my case is my children. I would be like if you want your grandchildren to visit you. I need to know that you’re taking this seriously. And then I would try to send them to like as neutral a place as I could. Which would probably be the CDC like I would say, look, this is the Center for Disease Control. This is not the Republicans. This is not the Democrats. This is not the lame stream media or whatever You know, this is a legitimate source of information and they say you need to be doing y, and z. So I would like you to please do x, y, and z If you want to spend time with my children, your grandchildren. I guess I mean like boy who like many bullets dodged here like first of all, the name Jennifer does not mean caring. Second of all my mom and her partner are taking this super duper seriously. Like when this first started my mom is like having a dinner party. And I’m like, oh, I Fran but then I saw the pictures that she posted and it was like her at one end of the table and then like eight feet away. There was like somebody else though it was kind of a joke. So that was good. But all right. So all right. So here is another comment. This isn’t about trivial matters like parking. It’s about a virus that has already killed thousands of people. And we have no viable treatment or vaccine available. If Karen’s quotidian quibbles nice can stop one potential case, it is justified. Let’s work toward the days when Karen’s police the fountain soda refills right. Like wouldn’t that be great. I mean, like let the killer like let’s let them loose on Chico’s once again. I mean, now we’ve got the great before. But here’s the thing. I mean, what I realized from reporting this piece is that it doesn’t sound like Karen’s stop anything. In fact, if there’s any kind of result to the call outs either in person or on social media. It just sounds like people digging their heels in even more. And maybe some of you guys like or on next door. I am on next door and here’s what I’m seeing and maybe this lines up with what you’re saying too. Somebody will say I was on a walk this morning and the joggers are moving. How do I get the joggers to stay out of my way because they’re not being safe. And the first response is stay home. So like that’s not helping, but it just seems like and I don’t know what the answer is because it seems to me like confrontation breeds more confrontation. Like if you have somebody say, hey, cut that out. The person who’s doing it isn’t going to cut it out, unless they’re me and they have crappy self-esteem and they’re like, oh, how can I make you happy they’re just going to keep doing it. They’re just going to like dig in. So I mean, I haven’t confronted anybody in person, they’re very reason like the guy who’s like spitting movies on the sidewalk across the street from my house. If I tell him to cut it out. He’s going to say, you know screw you lady and do it. I’m on my side of the street. So can’t win can’t win if you’re a nice white woman. What should we call male characters. Johns Johns is taken. Right I think Johns is being used already. What would I call like Gary like brad Chuck like except I was wondering like, why don’t we have a name for a guy who wants to speak to your manager. And I think is it because guys are managers themselves. Like they don’t have to call in the authorities because they are the authorities or they sort of carry authority with them just by being in a male body. I don’t know. Like I don’t know why we don’t have. But I think it should be Gary because Gary just like my husband is watching justified and if anybody under watch is justified like I guess Gary is the name of the guy that the handsome Marshall’s ex-wife is now married to and Gary brad gets up and there’s Brad Pitt. Like I don’t know. Brad Pitt sort of made brad like making brad oh Megan my assistant Megan says Chad and yes I don’t think we have a name because of internalized misogyny. Like what. Like is it cause there is no she goes for them. From Gary’s to go complete into you like they can just like where they’re daughters and be happy because they’re not going to complain anyhow, because everything is fine. I don’t know. I mean OK. So let’s get some more of these comments shall we. Says the problem is that no one is going to go confront six guys drinking beer in the driveway. They’re going to freak out at the guy who accidentally crept up to only five feet away in line or the gal who pushed up her glasses. They go after the same targets with nit picking not the people causing real problems. Same as usual OK. The in-person confrontations. I agree completely. Like you’re not going to walk up to the six guys you’re. I’m not going to walk up to the six guys drinking beer. I might, however, be more tempted to call the cops about six guys drinking beer. And this is where the race and class piece of it enters the equation because you know, again, when I was reporting the story. I talked to people who think a lot more deeply about the racial piece of it and they’re like, look, you know, it’s one thing for a white woman to call out another white woman. But it’s like I, as a white woman. I’m calling out a bunch of like young people of color. I could really be putting them at risk like calling the cops you know like I was always taught that the police are there to help you, and you call them and they’ll fix things, and they’ll make it better. But people of color have a very different experience and a very different life lived reality where if you call the cops like chances are you know there’s at least as good a chance that that’s going to escalate the situation and maybe even make it worse. Then there’s a chance that it’s going to get better. So like, what do you do. Because really a woman who’s pushing up her glasses or somebody who’s 5 feet away instead of 6 feet. That’s less of a problem than you know than some of the things that I’ve read about on next door dot.com which is people that are having like fall on house parties or the stuff that we all see on the news that people who are going to the beach and not socially distancing the people who are going to the park lake here in Philadelphia. There is Rittenhouse Square park. It’s like the Central Park of here. And we have one really gorgeous day last weekend. And it was packed It was packed and you know the police said lake or that’s where the mayor’s office. I guess issued a statement. They’re like this is really unfortunate this shouldn’t be happening. But it’s like nobody called the cops to bust it up. I don’t know if it’s that the police don’t want to show up because they’re worried about their own safety. I don’t know if it’s that there’s other priorities if there’s like real crime happening. So it’s like we’re not going to get too upset about the people who are socially distance because we’re worried about actual crime. I don’t know. I mean, this is all like incognita incognito to all of us. And I don’t know that anybody knows how to fix it or knows how we should be behaving like. If you guys have answers or suggestions. I would love to hear that because I live in a city. I see this every day. Again, for those of you who are just joining me. I am Jennifer Weiner. I am talking about my latest New York Times opinion piece, which was about coronavirus Karen’s and social media snitching and what you’re supposed to do if you see somebody out in the world who is not taking this seriously. Let me see if we have any other comments. We do have other comments. Hello let’s see. I think Kyle is a male counterpart to a Karen but I don’t see it used online that much as Karen. I mean and I don’t know if that’s because like women always get you picked on more than men or is it that women are doing these things more than men. Or is it that women are doing these things more than men because men have more power than women do so many layers. So many it’s like a spanner Skippito of social justice all right let’s see. Right yes somebody says like wearing a mask when walking into a store while black is a problem. Right like and I’m sure you guys read some of the same articles that I did, which is like as a white person, as a white lady I can put on a mask and go to a store and I am a white lady in a mask a black man can put on a mask and walk into the store and he’s a robber. Right like they’re going to have a completely different reaction to him than they are to me. And I think that black men, especially are really, really in a difficult situation because either you’re going to flout the rules that we’re all supposed to be following in terms of the coronavirus or you’re going to take steps to keep yourself safe. Or you’re going to wear a mask and how people react to you in a way that you really don’t want people reacting to you. All right. I’m going to go onto my Google doc and see if there are other questions. It does not look like there are from your accent. I can tell you are American. It’s true. I am American 100% I’m Jewish American knows. So a little bit different, although somebody said like we should stop calling Karin’s Karen’s and we should call them like the k word. And I’m like, no juice. We have that one. There’s a k word already. I won’t say it, but you know it’s like I mean and the whole idea of is Karen like a racist, sexist term. It’s like I think that it’s an insult. It’s not a nice thing to say about somebody. But I think that there’s a difference. You can like an insult which doesn’t feel great versus like a racial slur which can have real tangible consequences if you use it. So you know I will say carefully though, about using Karen in the future. I mean, I don’t know. I don’t want to pick on women more than men. And I don’t know why there’s not a term for men. And that’s certainly something that I will be thinking about in the future. All right. So here’s another comment. This is from Meg who writes, I am also heartily sick of the snitching a tattling that I see on next door especially from the privileged suburbanites. I share my neighborhood with. But I am not one of those people who is angry about other people’s behavior. Life is too stressful right now to get upset about what others or are doing or not doing. I wear my homemade mask sanitize my hands and steering wheel. Keep my distance. Make my shopping trips as surgical and efficient as possible. I assume no one wants to get sick or get other sick and I am happy when I see my neighbors out walking with their kids enjoying time together when spring blooms around us. Let the carrots. Be miserable. I’m going to bake some more cookies. OK Meg teach me your ways. Like how you. How are you so zen. And I want to like literally murder every single person that I see who’s like not wearing a mask and not standing six feet away from other people in the lowest checkout line like, why like, am I wired differently. What does Meg have access to. Is it possible tea. Is it durable something like, I don’t know. I mean, I know I’m not the only one who’s feeling this way. And I know I’m not the only one who’s feeling this way because like I can see other people who are feeling this way on social media. I don’t know. I mean, I think it would be a wonderful thing if the pandemic brought us all closer together and made us all more generous. Instead I feel like some of what’s happening is the pandemic is making us more isolated and more angry, which is perhaps has something to do with the tone that’s being set in the White House. I don’t know. Somebody asked what with the opposite of a Karen be. That is an excellent question. And I don’t know the answer. Like like what is the nicest not heard of OK. Boomer oh my god my kids said, OK boomer to me the other day. And I was just like wrong. I am an expert. I am not a boomer. They were like whatever mom. I mean, you can’t win with children you certainly can’t win by explaining to them that you’re not a boomer even xer the forgotten generation. But I think we should call the opposite of Karen’s megs because the woman who wrote that comment because I thought that was that was boy Meg is so zen. I am amazed. OK, here’s the last comment I want to share with you guys and maybe you will have some thoughts about this. Somebody wrote I cough cough from cold weather. I cough and forced it. Yeah, I’ve been coughing since I had a bad cold in February. I cough into a tissue or my elbow or even sometimes a tissue and my shirt collar. Hey, it’s my shirt. It’s clean and no one bit me is going to touch it. One of the key upside to staying at home is I can cough in the few times I get to venture out and I cough. People give me dirty looks and I’ve been spoken to. I’m not sick. I feel pretty good. All things considered. Yeah, I cough and probably will until it gets warm. We need to resurrect the term busybody. Stop being a busybody. Well, that’s a good point. I mean, I think that there are people who cough and aren’t upset and have every right to be in the world with the rest of us. But again busybody. Doesn’t that feel very female like. I mean. And then I was thinking about church ladies like are there any of my fellow Olds out there who can remember Dana Carvey’s church lady. Well, isn’t that special Remember that whole thing. There is no church man. It’s just church ladies. But I guess if there’s a bottom line here. It’s that confronting people really doesn’t help. Like the social scientists were very, very clear about that. It doesn’t help. It makes people dig in their heels. If you want to effect real change you should go to sort of institutions and not individuals. And I think as this goes on, I think there’s going to be lots of sort of individual liberties bumping up against the civic good, right. Like where my right to swing my fist ends where your face begins. Well, you know my right to be out in the world without a mask is where my droplet spray encounters your air that you’re breathing like I don’t. I don’t know. I don’t know what we’re going to do. And I think that like as Americans like we’re going to have some real situations here because you know we’re a country premised on individual liberties like places like Germany, where they’re just like, OK, if the government says, do it. We’re all going to do it like they’re going to get through this. I think with a lot more loss of life than we Brad’s and Karen’s are going to somebody says a group of Karen’s it’s called a privilege. That is a privilege of Karen’s. That’s beautiful. So let’s see. I think I’m going to start off. I think this was lovely. And I’m going to let you know tomorrow you get the lovely Elizabeth brunette on Monday, may 4th. You get wajahat Ali at what does all 1:00 o’clock on your Twitter on your Twitter right here. Tuesday, may 5th. Jameel Buoy Wednesday, May 6 Kara Swisher Thursday, May 7th. Farhad Manjoo Friday, May 8 is Jennifer Senior. Hopefully I will be back again someday. This has been fantastic. Thank you, everyone, for listening. This is fun and have a great day. Cover your cough wash your hands. Don’t be a Karen.