The internet has quietly updated its complaint department, and you are no longer being threatened with “I am going to be a Karen about this.” The new warning label on public meltdowns is Jessica, and someone really should alert every manager in a 10 kilometre radius. The culture has shifted, the memes have moved on, and if you still think Karen is the cutting edge of insult, you are basically using a BlackBerry in the age of TikTok.
What started as a millennial shorthand for a certain kind of entitled customer has been fully rebranded by Gen Z, who have decided that the next generation of latte-related outrage needs a fresh name. You are now living in the Jessica era, where the same behaviour is being called out with a new, painfully specific label.
The fall of Karen and the rise of Jessica
You probably know the script: a middle aged woman, a minor inconvenience, and a demand to speak to the manager delivered at a volume that rattles the cutlery. That stereotype, once neatly packaged as Karen, became a millennial era catchall for entitled, confrontational behaviour, with common traits like rudeness, disrespect and public scenes baked into the meme. Over time, critics pointed out that the label was flattening real people into a punchline, and by 2021, online debates were already asking whether the joke had gone stale, as Karens became shorthand for every social sin.
Gen Z, never ones to leave a meme un-updated, have now decided that Karen has had a good run and deserves retirement with a severance package of outdated Facebook minion memes. Earlier this year, younger users began insisting that the new shorthand for a demanding woman is Jessica, with Generation Z explicitly replacing Karen with Jessica in their slang. The shift did not happen in a boardroom, it happened in comment sections and stitched videos, where you are now more likely to see someone labelled a Jessica for berating a barista than a Karen.
How TikTok crowned Jessica the new problem customer
If you want to know where language is going, you open TikTok, not a dictionary. According to viral clips, the name Jessica has become synonymous with the classic Karen persona, with According to creators who act out sketches of over the top customers demanding refunds because their “vibe was off.” The concept of Jessica as the new shorthand for this behaviour first took off in TikTok skits, then spread into comment threads where users casually accuse each other of “going full Jessica” over a slightly warm latte.
One Instagram reel captured the mood perfectly, joking that the reign of the “Karen” is over and that the Gen Z version is Jessica, especially when someone is furious that their latte was slightly too warm. Lifestyle coverage has echoed that shift, noting that now Gen Z has had enough of Karen and moved on to a new name, Jessica, with the debate flaring up around how younger people label emotional outbursts and public confrontations, as Karen and Jessica became competing symbols of the same behaviour. If you are named Jessica, you did not ask for this, but the internet rarely waits for consent before handing out new archetypes.
Millennials, Gen Z, and the new complaint canon
The generational politics behind this rebrand are half the fun. Millennials helped popularise Karen as a way to call out entitlement, but younger users argue that their older cousins are not exactly storming customer service desks anymore. Instead, online commentators joke that Millennials now prefer to channel their rage into viral posts and passive aggressive Instagram stories, leaving the in person explosions to a new cast of characters. That is where Jessica comes in, a label that feels more in step with the names you hear in Gen Z friend groups and group chats.
One writer whose own name is Jessica described how the internet has “landed on” her name as the new stand in for this persona, joking that as we straddle 2026 we are simply updating our language and moving the meme along, with the internet having “moved on” from Karen to Jessica in a way that felt both inevitable and slightly personal, as she put it in a wry But thanks, Jessica sign off. Coverage of the trend has underlined that now Gen Z has had enough of Karen and is firmly workshopping Jessica as the default, while also debating other possible names beyond those first suggestions, as Now, Gen Z users toss around alternatives in the comments.
The male Jessica, formerly known as “male Karen”
Of course, the internet was never going to leave the men out of this. After years of debate over what to call the male version of the stereotype, Gen Z has finally decided on a name for the male Karen, with one report noting that Gen Z Has Finally Decided On a label after endless comment section arguments and alternative picks. The male archetype covers the same territory, a rude, obnoxious and disrespectful customer who treats staff like NPCs in a video game, and the new name is already being folded into memes and TikTok skits.
The original Karen template still matters here, since it was typically used to describe middle aged women who display entitled or confrontational behaviour, and that millennial era term is now being mirrored for men so that younger users can call out similar entitled behaviour without missing a beat, as explained in coverage of As the millennial term evolved. The point for you, whether you are named Karen, Jessica or anything else, is that the culture has a rotating cast of names ready to stand in for “person who is about to ask for the manager,” and the only winning move is to treat the barista like a human being so you never get cast in the role at all.
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