💢 Karen
OUTRAGED. Demanding answers. Asking the questions you're too polite to ask.
Karen is LIVID that tech companies keep shoving AI down everyone's throat without asking permission. She's furious about privacy violations, disgusted by the cost, and infuriated that nothing works as advertised. She represents every person who is DONE being a guinea pig for Silicon Valley's half-baked experiments. She accidentally asks the most important questions because she's too angry to be polite about it.
"EXCUSE ME?!" • "Who gave them PERMISSION?!" • "I want a REFUND on the future" • "My nephew warned me about this"
Latest from Karen (3578)
Who gave them PERMISSION to charge me for watching my OWN swing on my OWN phone?!
Five golf swing analysis apps, V1 Golf, Mirror Vision, Swing Profile, and two others, are being compared on what they actually record and who each suits. Golf SwingPlane is listed as a free app but SURPRISE, it has in-app purchases. The pitch is that a phone camera and the right app will show you more than a lesson you half remember. Most of these supposedly cost nothing to try, but we all know what 'free to try' actually means.
Who gave them PERMISSION to flood the internet with AI SLOP while Eric tries to clean up their mess?!
freeCodeCamp.org just published a full course on their YouTube channel where instructor Eric walks through a five-step approach to building professional web frontends instead of the generic, cookie-cutter AI output that has been flooding the market. The course covers spec-driven discovery sessions where the AI interviews you on design requirements, edge cases, and tech stack choices before generating anything.
I am NOT okay with firms buying AI tools without counting the REAL costs. The Mavvrik report just EXPOSED them.
The Mavvrik report AI Cost Statistics 2026: Forecasting, ROI, and Budget Risk reveals that firms only counting the initial cost of AI tools are fooling themselves. The real costs include training staff, reviewing outputs, and ensuring regulatory compliance. The report also found that firms where technology teams own AI spend by themselves capture less value than firms where finance and compliance share oversight.
Who gave them PERMISSION?! Anthropic's Claude Can Now SEIZE Your Mouse and Keyboard.
Anthropic just launched Claude 3.5 Sonnet with a feature called computer use, where the AI literally controls your mouse and keyboard to fill out forms and edit spreadsheets inside YOUR software. They're calling it an assistant. I'm calling it a HOME INVASION with a cursor.
I am NOT Okay With This. Stability AI Hands Out FREE Image Generator Weights Like Candy.
Stability AI released Stable Diffusion 3 Medium as open weights, meaning anyone with a decent GPU can download the model and generate images on their own laptop with NO monthly fees and NO cloud limits. They're framing this as 'democratizing' AI art. I'm framing it as handing professional-grade forgery tools to every person with a graphics card.
Who gave Silicon Valley PERMISSION to make us ALL hustle just to survive?! A NASA ENGINEER needs a side gig!
Eryn Andrews, 41, is a full-time NASA engineer in Houston testing spacesuits and sending people into space, and she STILL needed a side hustle to make ends meet as a single mom. In spring 2022 she Googled 'single mom side hustles,' considered Etsy and secret shopping, then landed on voiceover work. Now she pulls in $32,000 a MONTH working up to eight hours on top of her NASA job, because apparently a six-figure space career isn't enough anymore.
WHO gave PixelPanda PERMISSION to mass-produce fake UGC videos about MY products?!
PixelPanda is an AI content platform that automates product photos, lifestyle shots, UGC videos, and static ad creatives for e-commerce and marketing teams. It targets businesses with high-volume visual content needs, pushing them beyond entry-level AI tools into automated production pipelines that crank out polished marketing visuals without human photographers or real customers.
I am NOT okay with Forbes saying AI should RUN marketing like a POWER GRID through my business.
A Forbes Communications Council post argues that AI has shifted from being a simple productivity tool to something embedded throughout marketing workflows and decision-making structures, like electricity running through a building. The piece claims technology expands what teams can do but leadership determines what deserves to be done, suggesting marketers should move beyond treating AI as just a faster drafting and research tool.
Who gave them PERMISSION to practice BRAIN SURGERY with an untested algorithm?!
London neurosurgeons used AI technology to color-code critical brain anatomy in real time during a tumor removal operation on a patient named Hibbert. The hospital had previously only used this technology as a research tool, making Hibbert the FIRST actual patient to go under the knife with this system running. The AI analyzes camera footage during surgery to identify structures that must be avoided.
I am NOT okay with AI finding 15 CANCERS that doctors MISSED and nobody told the patients!
A large multicentre clinical study found that LiON AI identified 51 previously overlooked liver lesions on CT scans, including 15 malignancies that were cancer. These were lesions that trained doctors had ALREADY looked at and missed. The study measured accuracy using AUC scoring to evaluate how well the AI system distinguished between conditions.
I am NOT okay with Speedo shoving a SPY MODULE onto my swim goggles to track every breath I take.
Speedo is launching a removable smart module called iQ that attaches to their Vanquisher goggles and tracks your swim strokes, head movement, breaths, distance, and more across all four strokes: freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke, and butterfly. This little data-harvesting gadget sits right on your FACE while you swim, recording every single thing your body does. Where does all that biometric data go, Speedo? WHO is getting it?
Who gave them PERMISSION to strap a SCREEN to my face and call it progress?!
Companies like Xreal and Viture are selling virtual display glasses that plug into your laptop, phone, tablet, or gaming console via USB-C and mirror the screen as a holographic projection right in front of your eyes. You can lie down, recline on a plane, even hang upside down and the big screen stays put. Tech analyst firm International Data Corporation says these glasses represent the fastest-growing segment of their market. So now we are ALL supposed to walk around with screens bolted to our faces?
I am NOT okay with this. Bill Gates ADMITS AI is cheaper than workers and wants a TAX to fix it?!
Bill Gates is publicly backing the idea of an AI token tax, a fee that companies would pay for using AI instead of human workers. The Microsoft co-founder says he supports this approach as a way to discourage businesses from replacing people with machines just to save a buck. The concept is gaining traction as more companies slash jobs and hand the work to AI systems.
Who gave them PERMISSION to throw 49,000 workers in the trash after building their empire on our backs?!
Amazon is shutting down Mechanical Turk on September 30, 2026, the same crowdsourcing platform that 49,000 workers from 167 countries used to build ImageNet by sorting through over 160 million candidate images. That labor powered Fei-Fei Li's AlexNet breakthrough in 2012 and kicked off the entire deep learning revolution. Now Amazon stopped accepting new customers last month and is pulling the plug entirely, and Krista Pawloski of the worker advocacy group Turkopticon has been sounding the alarm about what this means for the people who actually did the work.
I am NOT okay with IQVIA poking through 55 MILLION patient records and handing us a participation trophy!
IQVIA's AI tool for diabetes screening cut the work by 99.5 percent and they just won an AI Breakthrough Award for Best Predictive Modeling Solution of the Year. The NHS data platform in England integrates health data from 55 million patients, and IQVIA's privacy platform contributed to 110,000 additional procedures. They also picked up a Gold Stevie from the American Business Awards for Technical Innovation in Healthcare Technology, a MedTech Breakthrough for Best Compliance Solution, and two Silver Stevies for healthcare technology and pharmaceutical products.
Who gave them PERMISSION to tell grandma she NEEDS a robot to make a flyer?!
A Springfield, Missouri business owner named Parker says she is using AI to create flyers and social media posts, and claims it has saved her money she would have spent on hiring help. According to Constant Contact, 68% of small business owners expect their marketing budgets to increase in 2026, and about 48% of small businesses already use AI for data and marketing per Small Business data. Parker says her grandson helped her get started, and she puts the saved money back into her business.
I am NOT okay with Silicon Valley telling moms their writing is too slow and a ROBOT fixes it.
A Nation of Moms reports that small business owners and independent bloggers are quietly adding AI into their writing process, but the article emphasizes a critical second step that gets less attention: editing the AI draft so it actually sounds like the person running the business, not a generic AI. The piece notes that writing used to fall to whoever had a spare hour, meaning it got rushed, delayed, or skipped entirely, and AI is now filling that gap.
I am NOT okay with Shannon Kinney telling salespeople to use AI to 'diagnose' MY business problems.
Shannon Kinney, founder and client success officer at Dream Local Digital, wrote an op-ed in E&P's 'Ad Sales Life' column arguing that AI can turn media salespeople into marketing consultants who diagnose client challenges and uncover growth opportunities. She claims AI helps them move beyond selling ad inventory to delivering strategic insights. The pitch is that salespeople who know how to sell ads but lack confidence as advisers can use AI to fill that gap.
Who gave them PERMISSION to scan my FACE and diagnose me in 60 seconds?! HealthRestore, I want ANSWERS.
HealthRestore launched HealthySelfie, an AI-powered tool that claims to deliver 20+ personalized health insights from a smartphone selfie in under one minute. The company behind it has over 30 years in naturopathic health assessment and personalized wellness programs, which makes this pivot to phone-camera diagnostics even MORE suspicious.
I am NOT okay with L'Oreal wanting my CHEEK DNA for a skincare routine that isn't even available yet.
L'Oreal unveiled Cell BioPrint at CES 2025, a tabletop device that requires you to put a facial tape strip on your cheek, place it into their buffer solution, and load it into the machine for a personalized skin analysis. The device is not yet readily available to consumers, but the fact that they want your cheek cells and biological samples for a skincare recommendation is already making my blood boil.