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Cruella de Phil: The Only Thing Worse than Being a Karen is Being a Doxxer
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It seems like the Philly Karen discourse has finally died down after a weekend of intense virality and S tier meme making. Absolutely brilliant stuff on the Internet, like “Cruella De Phil” and the Gollum photoshops. Jack Fritz even went on CNN to talk about it! What a weekend for the content-industrial complex.
If you live under a rock, and/or admirably went off the grid, the situation in question involved a woman demanding a Harrison Bader home run ball that fell into the stands in Miami on Friday night. It landed near her seat, and she was heard on video claiming that it was in her hand, but a dad came from a few seats over to claim it and give it to his kid. Then Karen confronted the dad and gave him an earful and he handed it to her as an act of de-escalation:
You go through all of the social media clips and memes and diatribes and you see doxxing advocates asking for the woman’s name. “Let’s make her famous!” The intent is accountability, either forcing the woman to respond and/or pulling her employer into the mix.
In specificity, doxxing is defined as the action of “searching for and publishing private or identifying information about (a particular individual) on the internet, typically with malicious intent.” In this case that’s going public with info like Karen’s name, her address, and job. There’s no federal law against publishing identifying information about someone, but states like California, Illinois, and Arizona do have their own rules. The interpretations vary, but the general theme is that doxxing opens the door to more defined actions, like harassment and stalking, then we’re sliding down the slippery slope without flat ground anywhere to be seen. In this case, a name was floated out there and the person with said name came out to tell everyone that it wasn’t her, so that’s an example of what happens when we open Pandora’s Dox.
But you don’t even need to go down that rabbit hole to litigate this situation.
Consider what had already happened at that point –
Cruella de Phil had her mug blasted all over the internet and was more or less booed out of the stadium. The kid got to meet Harrison Bader and the Marlins gave him a bag of gifts. The dad went public and told his side of the story, which is now exiting the news cycle on Monday morning. So there’s no lingering injustice here, no open ticket to resolve. Both teams made right by the child, and the woman was overwhelmingly scorned for her Karen behavior.
What doxxing brings to the forefront is the question of “does the punishment fit the crime?” The doxxers will say she deserves to face consequences beyond what already happened, which seems a bit silly since we’re talking about grown adults fighting over a baseball. Did Phillies Karen pull a gun? No. Did she physically assault anyone? No. Did she put the kid’s head in the toilet and give him a swirlie? No. Did she slap the dad across the face and call him a poopyhead? No. So in a court of law, the charge would be… acting like an asshole? That’s not something that lands you in front of a judge in the first place, so the punishment would be what? 10 years in a federal prison?
That’s why it feels like the public ridicule and embarrassment is sufficient. And if you think she just floated off into obscurity without any of her family, friends, or co-workers seeing that video, then congratulations! I’ve got beachfront property in Clifton Heights that I just listed on Zillow. It’s going for $800,000 at a 5.5% interest rate, you just have to waive the inspection and pay $25k over asking price.
Bottom line, sometimes you lose the plot and act and end up looking like a fool. I just don’t think that exhibiting Karen-like behavior is grounds for being doxxed and losing your job, but that’s just like, my opinion man.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com