Putin thanks for nuclear time mem5/18/2023 ![]() ![]() The meme is therefore rooted in black American internet culture, says Attiah – an attempt to find humour in real-world racism and oppression. ![]() ![]() The antagonist of one such clip, of a woman calling the police over a group of African American men having a barbecue in a park in Oakland, California, came to be known as BBQ Becky (another name applied to white women online). In 2018, it was among a handful of female names to become attached to a spate of viral videos showing white women racially targeting people of colour. It is that privilege that the meme sets out to skewer. “It has afforded me, I think, a certain privilege,” says Attiah. Her mother, who had immigrated from Nigeria, chose the name so that Attiah could “easily move around in a white-dominated world”. In 2018 there were just 468 baby Karens born. When Attiah was born in 1986, “Karen” was already in decline, having peaked in the US in 1965. “It was an unspoken thing, but Karen was a white, older lady’s name.” “Growing up as a kid in the 1990s, I remember people – particularly other black kids – being like, ‘You don’t look like a Karen,’” recalls Karen Attiah, an editor at the Washington Post. The choice of moniker has been linked to the 2004 film Mean Girls, where a character says, outraged: “Oh my God, Karen, you can’t just ask someone why they’re white” – a meme in and of itself.īut more likely, the name was chosen for its association with whiteness. “Whenever you want to signal that that character’s a Karen, you’ll just toss that haircut on,” says the editor-in-chief, Don Caldwell. Know Your Meme, a Wiki-style site that defines internet culture, added “Karen” last year as an extension of the “‘Can I speak to the manager’ haircut” meme, born of Black Twitter back in 2014. It’s supposed to be about people who want to speak to the manager.” “Anything you say, people can be like, ‘OK, well, whatever, KAREN’ – but that’s not even how the meme is supposed to be used. “I spend a lot of time on Twitter, so I find it rather annoying,” says Karen Geier, a writer and podcaster from Toronto. ![]() Throughout October, Russian state television hosts - and even some officials, such as former President Dmitry Medvedev - openly called for the use of nuclear weapons to defend four recently claimed regions of Ukraine: Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.But as the meme has become more prominent in online discourse, its meaning has become confused, and criticism has been voiced that it is sexist – with real-life Karens caught in the crosshairs. A woman stands next to the remains of a residential building that was destroyed Tuesday by a Russian missile in Mykolaiv, Ukraine. The measured restatement of Russia’s long-held policy - with up to 6,000 warheads at its disposal, Moscow’s nuclear arsenal is second only to the U.S.’ - stands in stark contrast to increasingly threatening comments about using nuclear weapons in Ukraine, where Moscow’s forces have been on the back foot. The statement also included an appeal for talks about the kinds of “security guarantees” Russia had demanded of NATO before it invaded Ukraine in February. The statement added that Russian nuclear doctrine was unambiguous and did not allow for “expansive interpretation,” indicating Moscow may be trying to walk back a number of statements calling the doctrine into question. “Russia is strictly and consistently guided by the tenet that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” said the statement on the Russian Foreign Ministry website. ![]()
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