A racially heated exchange inside a Laguna Beach trolley was captured on video and is currently spreading online. The verbal altercation sees a California man (read: a male Karen) harassing other passengers and flipping them off, before telling them to “go with them home to China.”
As the one-and-half-minute clip starts, the male Karen — sporting a straw sun hat, black t-shirt, grey shorts, and shades — can be seen giving an offensive gesture with his hand directed at the cameraman, while he sits aboard the beach trolley. “I’ll give you two with the American flag. Choose which one you want.” fires the male Karen as he points at a tattoo on the back of his hand. “I’ll give you one, too, since you’re a supporter, sympathizer. Why don’t you go with them home to China?“
In response, the cameraman begins to lose his patience with the rude man, saying, “You’re ignorant. You should go back to Europe or f*cking wherever you’re from.” The male Karen then attempts to ridicule the cameraman’s stuttering and vocabulary, which is likely due to the heated nature of the confrontation. “Notice how I don’t use bad language to make a point. You stutter with your vocabulary.” declares the male Karen with a smug grin on his face.
To this, the cameraman fires back, “I don’t stutter. I’m educated and rich. You’re poor.” In an attempt to weaponize his own words, the California Karen responds with, “Rich with what? Rich with sin.” as he points at the person sitting next to the cameraman, exclaiming, “That’s sin. You just committed it.” While we don’t get to see the person he is pointing at, it’s heavily implied that the woman next to the cameraman is of Asian descent. “You’re such an ignorant a**hole.” replies the cameraman.
At this point, the trolley driver actually attempts to intervene, and can be seen asking the male Karen, “Can you calm down, please?” though this doesn’t perturb him. “Yeah, get this ignorant a**hole off the bus.” expresses the person recording the footage. Getting more irate, the California man then threatens, “I’ll eat you for lunch, boy. We better be friends.” With tensions intensifying, the cameraman exclaims, “You ain’t doing sh*t. I’ll f*cking shoot you.”
The male Karen starts calling the cameraman a “tranny” before flipping them the bird one more time and uttering the words, “This is America, not China. Why don’t you go walk off the freeway?“
While details surrounding the incident remain scarce, social media users took to the comments section to air their thoughts on the disturbing video. One Redditor expressed:
They’re always so weird-looking, poor, or trashy. Or a combination of all three.
lukaron via Reddit
We needed to be working toward more social support and education opportunities for rural communities.
Instead we get the current clusterf*ck.
People like this are [quite mistakenly] feeling more emboldened since their toddler-in-chief is back.
For those out there who fit that category?
Proceed at your own risk.
Some of us do not give a sh*t who the president is – you – will not be acting any kind of fucked up way to anyone in our vicinity.
Elsewhere, another commenter weighed in, writing, “he lost any credibility when he said ‘I’ll eat you for lunch boy’ not that he had any to begin with.” while another chipped in with, “Tell me who you voted for, without telling me who you voted for. Go!“
The brief clip serves as a worrying reminder of how xenophobic attitudes can manifest themselves publicly, which is especially concerning when the abuse is seemingly unprovoked.
