Nintendo Switch Karen

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About

Nintendo Switch Karen, also known as Antisocial Karen refers to a character who appeared in the first trailer for the Nintendo Switch, bringing the console to a party. After her appearance, social media users joked that she was an antisocial type who preferred gaming over hanging out with friends.

Origin

On October 20th, 2016, Nintendo released the first trailer for the Nintendo Switch (shown below).

In the trailer, a woman brings the Switch to a rooftop party. That day, Tumblr user joematar^[1] posted a joke about the woman arriving at the party with the caption “Oh shit, Karen brought her stupid Nintendo thing to the party again. We’re DRINKING, Karen. We’re having CONVERSATIONS.” As of December 27th, 2017, the post has over 23,000 notes (shown below).

Spread

Karen became the unofficial name for the character among the Nintendo fandom following the post. She also became the subject of a high volume of Reddit jokes. On the Nintendo Switch subreddit, the moderators were forced to temporarily ban posts related to Karen,^[2] which thus launched a subreddit entirely devoted to Karen posts, /r/NintendoKaren,^[3] that has over 1,800 subscribers. The subreddit features a high volume of Karen photoshops and intense discussion about the amount of rings Karen is wearing.

The Karen phenomenon was covered by Polygon^[4] and Mic.^[5] Karen also has her own parody Twitter account with 402 followers.^[6] On December 26th, 2016, unrealitymag^[7] published an interview with joematar and also discussed the meme. On April 22nd, the actress who played "Karen" posted to Instagram embracing her character's fandom.

On December 25th, 2017, a high school student named Karen took to Reddit's /r/OutOfTheLoop^[8] to inquire about the origins of the meme, as she reported that she was being bullied in school by kids saying "f--k you Karen." The post gained over 3,100 upvotes.