Video from a ring doorbell has captured a freakout of epic proportions by a woman the internet has dubbed "HOA Karen."
The video began with a woman ringing the doorbell by sneering into the camera and aggressively poking at the device several times. The homeowner was not available to come to the door at that moment - something they used the Ring device to tell her.
Not one to be deterred, the woman whipped out a packet of HOA bylaws (yeah, she came prepared) and launched into her rant - right at the camera.
Before we get into the content (and the deliciously awkward video) it occurs to us that some of you readers may not know what an HOA is since they are not the sort of thing that are popular everywhere. HOA stands for "Homeowner's Association" and is a group of homeowners who come together to create the rules and regulations for the community.
HOA boards usually consist of a handful of residents who hold titles like HOA President, Vice President, etc. The board holds meetings where other homeowners can share their thoughts and opinions, but the (usually elected) members of the board itself have final say on creation and enforcement of the rules - which are called bylaws.
Anyone who purchases a home in that community must pay management fees to the HOA and agrees to abide by those rules. Failing to do so can result in fines, lawsuits, and even foreclosure of your home by the HOA.
In theory HOA's serve to keep thing tidy, peaceful, and well-maintained. The properly managed ones do just that.
Unfortunately it doesn't take a master of Google-Fu to find story after story of HOA board members essentially terrorizing the people who live in their communities by micromanaging their day-to-day lives, pulling stunts like sowing up with rulers to measure the length of their grass and the distance they're parked from the curb, and issuing steep fines and lawsuits for every little thing.
Paint. Grass length. Planting flowers that aren't HOA approved. And in this case, having a lawn sign.
So back to HOA Karen we go. To recap, she showed up to this person's home unannounced at 10 on a Sunday morning (assuming the time stamp on the video is accurate) and smashed on their doorbell to lecture them about their lawn sign.
When the homeowner couldn't come to the door, HOA Karen decided to just lecture their Ring device instead. Please enjoy.
HOA Karen does NOT approve of the Biden signs in the yardwww.youtube.com
Karen came armed for battle with a copy of the bylaws and kept citing section 5.20 - which, evidently, contains rules about lawn signs. But based on what she said, it seems her issue wasn't the fact that there was a lawn sign in general. It was that the sign was pro-Biden.
HOA Karen threatened to sue the homeowner if "this Harris/Biden sh*t" wasn't removed. It's clear in the video how angry the woman truly was about the sign. Not only did she serve some serious Trunchbull-level scowls, but her body was visibly trembling with rage.
Her rant didn't just feature a lawsuit threat. The woman also let the homeowner know that she was going to use them to sell her home in the community, but now that she has seen "this Harris/Biden sh*t" she won't be doing that. HOA Karen also warns "you're gonna lose a lot of business because of this crap."
Eventually the woman storms off.
The homeowner seemed completely non-plussed by Karen's Karening and just responded
"Well, I got all that on film."
That film made its way to social media pretty quickly. Twitter certainly had a good time with it.
So yeah ... she seems nice.