A viral video posted to Reddit this week shows an elderly “Karen” harassing her neighbor over his kids’ sidewalk chalk drawings and making racist remarks about his “slanted eyes.”
The video, posted to r/PublicFreakout, opens with Karen and her husband confronting the man in his garage. The man dismisses their complaints and tells them to report to the HOA if they have such a problem with his kids’ chalk drawings.
“You son of a bitch,” Karen says. “You won’t even tell your kids to stop it? Where’s your wife? She’s a nice person. She talks nice.”
As the couple hobbles out of the garage, Karen makes one last threat: “Tell your kids to stop it or else I’m gonna—“
“You’re gonna do what?” the man interrupts her. “Sir, take your wife home, man. I’m serious.”
Karen then reenters the garage and resumes harassing the man. She repeatedly asks to speak to his wife and says, “I don’t think you live here because you have slanted eyes.”
“Slanted eyes? Wow, that’s racist,” the man says.
Karen continues to ask for the man’s wife, saying he has “nice kids and a nice wife.”
“Well apparently they’re not nice when they’re just coloring chalk on the sidewalk,” he replies. “What’s bothering you about this?”
“Because it looks like shit,” Karen says.
“The entire neighborhood has zero problem with it except you,” the man later tells the couple. “You’ve had a problem with me since I moved in here.”
“No, we saw a guy that didn’t have slanted eyes that moved in here,” Karen replies.
Karen and her husband turn again to leave the man’s garage, vowing to call the HOA about the chalk drawings. Karen tells the man she’s “gonna get a pail and a brush and tell your kids to come out here and [clean this]”.
“Over my dead body,” the man replies. “You touch my kids, you’re gonna see something else.”
With that, Karen and her husband make their way back into the garage—again. The man demands they “get the hell out of my house” and tells Karen’s husband this is her “last chance before I pepper spray her.”
Undaunted, Karen kicks over the man’s portable fan.
“That’s it,” he says, putting down his phone before the video ends.
Rather than slam Karen for being racist, commenters directed most of their ire at homeowners associations, which one redditor described as “cancer.” Another commenter said neighborhoods that are part of HOAs and infested with Karens create a self-perpetuating cycle.
“HOA’s were created by Karens,” they wrote. “They exist as a sort of spawning pool where more Karens can be created. It trains them in the art of ‘how to not mind your fucking business’!”
