"I Knew It" Karen

About

Theresarubalcava1 is a content creator known on TikTok as the "I Knew It" Karen for a sketch in which she pretends to be Karen complaining about things and saying her catchphrase "I knew it" in every video. She has been posting POV Karen videos since 2021, but in early January 2024 people on the platform started to recreate her videos saying her "I knew it" catchphrase.

Origin

Theresarubalcava1 began posting POV videos pretending to be a Karen in January 2021,^[1] with the earliest notable upload as the Karen being posted on January 5th, 2021, in a video^[2] (shown below, left) titled "POV: What a Karen orders from a movie theatre concession stand with a line of people behind her." The post amassed over 17,000 likes and 92 shares in three years.

On October 18th, 2023, @theresarubalcava1^[3] posted her first video saying the catchphrase "I knew it" for a skit about a Karen trying her "chips in front of the cashier at Taco Bell." The post (shown below, right) garnered over 237,000 plays and 21,000 likes in six months.

Spread

Going into January 2024, @theresarubalcava1 started to get known as the "I knew it" Karen, sparking a series of parodies about her character and catchphrases. For example, on January 28th, 2024, user @zacharyfostermusic^[4] posted a video titled "My husband after watching every Karen eating video," which shows the man saying "I knew it" after eating a meal (shown below, left). The post amassed roughly 1.9 million plays and 233,000 likes in three months.

On February 20th, 2024, influencer^[5] Trisha Paytas recreated the "I knew it" meme (shown below, right), amassing more than 385,000 plays and 20,000 likes in two months.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References