A viral TikTok video shows a woman dubbed a “Karen” calling the police on a Black YouTuber after she walked into his camera shot in a Best Buy parking lot.
In a TikTok posted on Monday by @youtuberickey, the woman tells Rickey that if he videotapes her, she will “call the police.” She then walks toward the camera and accuses the cameraperson of pointing the lens at her. She tells him to delete the video “right now.”
“There’s real stuff going on. She’s calling the cops because we’re filming,” Rickey says to the cameraperson. In an email to the Daily Dot, Rickey said the video was filmed by a friend of his named Victor.
The woman then calls the police and says that Rickey and Victor are “a Black man and a Hispanic man.” Rickey tells her that he’s not Black, he’s “mixed.” “I’m Black, and Black as hell,” he says.
Rickey’s video has been viewed over a million times on TikTok and over half a million views on YouTube. The full version of the video includes Rickey and Victor talking to a police officer.
In the full-length YouTube video, Rickey drops a piece of trash in the parking lot of a Best Buy. The woman tells him that he dropped the piece of trash, and he goes to pick it up. Moments later, he drops his AirPods on the ground, and the woman tells him “karma’s a bitch.”
The woman then walks toward Rickey and says that Victor pointed the camera at her face and threatens to call the police. The video shows her calling the police and describing the races of both men to the responder.
The video then shows Rickey talking with a police officer, and the officer watches the video that Victor took. The officer tells Rickey and Victor that they’re “good” and to enjoy their day.
Later in the video, Rickey tells his mother over the phone that a woman called the police on him.
Rickey told the Daily Dot that he’s never before had someone walk into the shot of a video that he and his friends were making for YouTube.
“I think that she was probably having a bad day and saw two young minorities breaking the norm by vlogging in our home town and it didn’t sit too well with her,” Rickey told the Daily Dot. “As much as these encounters suck in the moment, they become memories and stories for people to learn and grow from.”
Commenters on Rickey’s TikTok videos talked about how filming in a public place is legal, and many said that it seemed like the woman was attempting to cause problems for no reason.
“I swear some people just got nothing better to do with their lives,” @youraveragemenace_ commented. “Like how? How is she that upset.”
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