Redeem now - A viral video from TikTok user @savsoares shows a woman physically blocking a car from moving in a parking lot while directing another car to take an open parking spot.
- The video has amassed over 4 million likes and 18 million views in the four days since it was posted, with both @savsoares and people in the comments calling the woman a "Karen."
- The video comes at a time when the "Karen" label, which refers to entitled white women, has been increasingly used to describe people in viral videos online.
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A TikTok video shows a new "parking lot Karen" who has been added to the ranks of viral white women whose public behavior has been uploaded, and shamed, on social media.
The video, which was uploaded by TikTok user @savsoares (who can also be found on Instagram at @savvsoares and Twitter at @savvvsoares), shows a woman blocking the movement of the car in which @savsoares is the passenger. The woman attempts to grab @savsoares' camera at the beginning and tells her to stop filming, and then proceeds to physically block the car in order to prevent it from moving. When @savsoares remarks that the woman is sitting on the car, she says, "I'm not sitting on her car, I'm leaning on it."
@savsoaresKAREN ##inyourface ##familystorytime ##AXEfingersdown ##electricitygame ##AlmondWalk ##fyp
♬ original sound - savsoares
Throughout the video, the woman directs a driver she calls Krysta to pull forward, at points telling her, "Krysta, this is your right spot." At one point, @savsoares remarks that she must hate her life, to which the woman responds, "No, I love my life and I have my brand new grand baby in there who we're trying to take for a walk." Towards the end of the video, the woman finally moves after the people in the car repeatedly state that there are two parking spots open.
The video went viral on TikTok, amassing approximately 4.2 million likes, 18.2 million views, and 85,1000 comments in the four days since it was posted. It was also re-uploaded on Twitter, where it has over 9,000 retweets and 19,000 likes. Comments on TikTok praised @savsoares and the driver's patience, and others pointed out that the woman blocking the car was wearing a shirt that read "live life, laugh proudly, love forever."
@savsoares said in two follow-up videos that the event was part of a beach parking dispute
The original poster, @savsoares, has since uploaded several other videos on TikTok explaining the situation. In the first, she says that she and her friend were looking for a parking spot at the beach. Upon seeing a stopped car in an aisle of the parking lot, they waited and eventually decided to drive past, at which point other cars followed. Once they found a spot, @savsoares said that her friend, the driver, put her blinker on, at which point they "[saw] the 'Karen' walking up to [their] car."
@savsoarespart 1 ~ thank you all for waiting🥰 (@brookesnoww ‘s car)
♬ original sound - savsoares
In a second video, @savsoares said that she rolled down her window after the woman sat down on the car, saying that @savsoares and her friend had cut in front of her while she was waiting for a parking spot. @savsoares said in the video that the woman told them that the spot had opened up was "[their] right spot," at which point @savsoares started to record. After the original video ended, the two cars were forced to park next to each other in the two open spots; @savsoares said that only after she and her friend left did the woman leave the car. Insider has reached out to @savsoares for comment.
The video comes at a time of heightened "Karen" discourse, as videos emerge on social media of white women acting entitled in public spaces. There's the now-infamous "Central Park Karen" (whose real name is Amy Cooper), who called the police on a black man who asked her to leash her dog per New York City legal code. Recently, a video also went viral on Twitter in which a woman who self-identifies as Shelley Lewis (and also appears to also be a prominent flat-earther) gets upset after being denied entry to a Gelson's Market for refusing to wear a mask. One of the most infamous "Karen" incidents was in 2018, when a white woman called the police on a black family barbecuing in Oakland.
"Parking lot Karen" is now the latest in a line of women that people online have called out for entitled behavior, inciting conflict over things like beach parking spots.
- Read more:
- A woman in a video appears to call the police claiming there's an 'African American man threatening my life' — he apparently had asked her dog on a leash
- A maskless woman who filmed her protest against a market that wouldn't admit her appears to be a prominent 'Flat Earth' cospiracy theorist
- TikTok videos show students ignoring university coronavirus quarantines and frolicking outside in large groups
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