Chads and Karens

and why you created them..

Imagine you’re scrolling Facebook and you see Karen McFreedom posting a ten-paragraph rant about how mask mandates violated her constitutional rights and made her dog anxious. You feel your blood pressure spike. You think:

“How can people like this exist? Why is the world full of willful ignorance and weaponized entitlement?”

What if I told you “That’s your projection you sweet sweet mess”?

What part of you created Karen?

• Karen is your repressed need to be right.
  She says out loud what your ego whispers: “If I yell with enough conviction, I become the truth.”

• She embodies your fear of powerlessness.
  That irrational, lashing-out energy? That’s what you feel like inside when you think no one’s listening to you or respecting your experience.

• She’s your inner entitlement, disowned.
  You’ve spent your life trying not to be selfish or irrational, so the mind projects that shadow outward onto someone who gladly acts it out for you.

• She’s also your secret craving for certainty.
  Karens don’t doubt. Karens know. Even when they’re wrong. It’s infuriating, and, let’s be honest, a little enviable. 🤫

You spot her because you already had the pattern inside you.

She just gave it a face, a bob, and a post timestamp.

Now enter: The Climate Change Denier

This one’s more existential. Some guy named Chad Freedomblaster III posts a meme about how the earth is cooling and volcanoes fart more CO₂ than humans ever could. You groan. You spiral. You question humanity.

What if I told you “Chad isn’t the problem. He’s the movie. Your mind is the projector.”?

What part of you is Chad?

• He’s your denial of consequences.
  That part of you that doesn’t want to face the results of your actions, or your species’ actions. He’s just better at ignoring it.

• He’s your internal resistance to responsibility.
  Taking responsibility is heavy. So you punt it. Chad punts it. His punting makes yours visible.

• He’s your fear of change and instability.
  Climate change is chaos. Denying it is a desperate bid for control. You spot the delusion because your own ego is doing the same thing in quieter ways.

• He’s your exasperated inner child.
  “Why can’t the world just not be broken?” He says it with a truck decal. You say it with quiet dread at 2 a.m.

So why did your psyche create them?

Because the ego needs an “other.” It survives by dividing the world into me vs. them.

It projects your disowned impulses onto people who make great scapegoats.

Karen screams your buried rage.

Chad parrots your buried fear.

You react… because your ego recognizes itself.

Now here is the spicy part: Forgiving them means forgiving yourself.

Which is why it’s so much easier to just stay mad and refresh the feed.

Bonus Take: If projection is perception. Consider what that means about every creator of self-help content in the history of forever. 😬 (That actually explains some things)

To all the real-life Chads and Karens out there:

We regret to inform you that your perfectly ordinary names were hijacked by the internet, stripped of context, and reassembled into walking satire.

This was not your fault.
You were just trying to live your lives, book dentist appointments, and order lattes like the rest of us.

Unfortunately, collective projection needed avatars, and your names were statistically available.

Please know that when we say “Karen,” we do not mean you, Karen-from-accounting-who-bakes-excellent-muffins.
And when we say “Chad,” we’re not referring to you, Chad-who-quietly-reads-Camus-on-lunch-breaks.

You are seen.
You are forgiven.
You are not the meme.
(unless you decide to be, in which case… own it)