The Starbucks “Bearista” cup craze is all over the news, with many fighting over the teddy bear merch as if their lives depended on it. Of course, many of those “fortunate” enough to get their hands on the cups ended up reselling them for hundreds of dollars. Fortunately, we have a “Karen vigilante” in Chicago, Illinois, who will waste the scalpers’ time by making them drive for a sale that will never take place.
The self-proclaimed “Karen vigilante,” arguably the good type of Karen out in the wild, is TikTok user tessa420_. She explained that she has spent hours online baiting Starbucks “Bearista” cups resellers, mostly on Facebook Marketplace, who are offering the teddy bears online for 300 or 400 dollars.
“I’ll message them and I’ll be like, ‘Hey, I really want this glass teddy bear. I live two hours away from you. Can you meet in this location at this time? I have $700 cash to give you,” Tessa explained.
If it’s not clear by now, the Illinois vigilante does not have the money to spend on a cute, and maybe overrated, glass cup. Instead, she just sends a picture of a stack of $700 to the resellers, who are not smart enough to reverse Google search the image to verify its authenticity.
“They genuinely think, ‘Oh my god, that person really has the money. I have to meet them,’” Tessa added.
‘This Was A Scam’
According to Tessa, some of these scalpers ended up making the hours-long trip. She, however, following the baiting, makes up last-minute excuses such as traffic to explain her not being there.
Eventually, when the resellers grow impatient or paranoid, the Illinois Karen vigilante admits to her deceit, saying, “This was a scam.” Then, for the cherry on top, Tessa just blocks them, leaving them in the middle of nowhere, hopefully with an empty gas tank.
“Ain’t nothing better than making an evil reseller [expletive] drive out of their way, waste their own time, waste their own money, cause they wanna waste other people’s time and money,” Tessa concluded.
People celebrated the Karen vigilante in the comments, perhaps fueled by their own frustration over the “Bearista” craze.
“Out here doing the lords work,” one user said. Another one commented, “Keep up the good fight.” A Starbucks barista added, “As a barista who has been dealing with a million phone calls and in store customers asking if we still have them… THANK YOU!!!!“
Tessa is just another reminder that, when it comes to collectibles, you should straight up refrain from feeding the scalpers.
