As if COVID wasn’t enough, it’s also the year of the Karen. You remember Karens, don’t you? They’re the middle-aged blonde white women in their 30’s or 40’s who reek of entitlement, are desperate for validation, are outraged by every little thing, and often have Kate Gosselin’s old spiky bob haircut. They also LOVE to speak to the manager of whatever unlucky establishment they’re contaminating.
So, what’s the opposite of a Karen? An anti-Karen? The Internet may have found one in a woman calling herself Binky Bell. She’s a mother of four who introduced herself to the world in a TikTok video that has since gone viral.
Who Is the TikTok Anti-Karen?
In the video, Binky Bell starts out by taking us to her kids’ rooms, where she reveals their sweet collection of high-tech gadgets. “Lemme show ya how good my kids have it,” Binky says, before the camera unveils a menagerie of expensive electronics. She points out a Playstation, an Xbox, a couple of headsets, a whole gaming PC, another Xbox, and no less than four televisions, three of them mounted and one of them “giant” (her word).
The optics aren’t particularly great. I mean, what is Binky Bell trying to tell us? That she’s rich? That her children are spoiled? As Comic Sands puts it, “…given the terrible economic blow so many have suffered at the hands of the global pandemic, it [seems] her timing couldn’t be worse.”
Turns out, that’s not at all what Binky is going for. In fact, it might be much darker. She grabs a big hammer and gives us a stern look.
“So when their grades start to slip because of the video games,” she tells us, “you know what I gotta do?”
Oh crap, is this mom gonna go on a tear and start smashing all the TV’s? I’m already picturing four little broken-hearted children, relegated to reading or, God forbid, playing outside.
But that’s not what Binky Bell does.
The video cuts to Binky sitting at a table with her kids. “I have to sit down and have a conversation with them,” she says. “I have to tell them that I noticed their grades dropped, and I need to see if there’s something going on with them mentally or emotionally. I have to have a conversation with them and teach them about healthy boundaries when it comes to technology.”
Then Binky Bell looks at us and says, “I have to stop blaming video games for things that I have the power to control in my own home.”
Wow. Imagine that. A reasonable parent on the Internet.
Binky Bell’s TikTok video, which currently has over 1 million views, was posted on the “FuckYouKaren” subreddit. It was there that people started calling her the anti-Karen. After all, Binky seems calm and rational, not aggrieved and insane. And instead of being abusive, she appears to be gracious, considerate, and attentive. But best of all…
…Binky has much better hair than Kate Gosselin.
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