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As any retail worker will tell you, customer service is a tough business. It doesn’t matter if you’re a barista, a bartender or a fast food employee, it can be strenuous, dealing with humans — especially entitled ones. In modern slang, an uptight, officious know-it-all — specifically, a woman — is known as a “Karen.” We’ve all met one, even if we’d prefer not to have.

Karens are like cockroaches; you hope never to see them, but when you do, it’s an unpleasant experience for everyone involved. Although it’s common knowledge that customer service representatives encounter the most Karens, you can find yourself in a screaming match with one at your local Stop & Shop, if you’re not careful. They’re everywhere.

Julie, a TikTok content creator and salon owner, acted out her own encounter with a Karen on the video-sharing platform. Intuition tells us that the below video isn’t a real-time event, but rather a reenactment of a past encounter. That’s not to say that the TikTok couldn’t be a playback of a real interaction, but it does appear scripted to a degree.

In the video, we see Julie giving a manicure to a customer that we’ll fittingly call “Karen.” After asking whether Karen liked the chosen color, the customer informed the manicurist that she’d prefer a different one, so the latter accommodated the request with a different shade.

Halfway through the manicure, the nail artist asks again if Karen likes the color. This time, Karen informs her that she does, so Julie finishes off the new color. Afterwards, Karen starts a confrontation about how she doesn’t like the nails, even going as far as to call them “sh*t.”

“She literally asked if she liked it and she said yeah some people man,” one user commented.

“I’d charge double and never make another appointment for her again,” another wrote.

Julie sets her boundaries, calmly refusing Karen a refund and also refusing to re-do the nails.

And that, folks, is how you run a business. Karen 101.

Admit it, we’ve all taken a joke too far sometimes. When it’s for the sake of entertainment, sometimes we laugh at the expense of others. When we consider TV shows such as Impractical Jokers, Jackass, and Punk’d, there’s our irrefutable evidence that pranksters thrive on the ‘bigger and better’ mentality. If the last joke didn’t land or received a so-so reaction, they’ll amp up the fear and confusion to produce more desirable results.

TikTok has become a hub for pranksters to share their greatest accomplishments. And by ‘greatest accomplishments,’ we mean scaring the pants off of unsuspecting passersby. The TikTok profile @georgia_pranksters has been uploading videos since December 2022, containing “Bush Man” camouflaging himself in foliage and scaring the wits out of regular citizens.

No one is safe from Bush Man’s rampage, be it dogs, the elderly, children — anyone is a target. In a video posted on July 3, Bush Man waits in anonymity as a father and daughter duo pass by. He initiates the prank by making a snorting noise reminiscent of a pig, causing the father to look over his shoulder and suspect the daughter.

Shortly after, once the daughter enters his line of sight, Bush Man emerges and snorts again, causing the daughter to flinch instinctively. What he could have never predicted, however, was how the daughter proceeds to violently cry and scream. This appears to be an involuntary reaction from her, but the Bush Man feels immediately guilty.

While the father consoles his daughter, the prankster profusely apologizes, but the man is all smiles, so he doesn’t seem to have taken the joke personally. After reassuring Bush Man that his daughter is fine, the father leads her away, still finding the whole thing amusing.

It’s been highlighted in the comments (not always sensitively) that the daughter may have some form of special needs disability, which would explain her excessive reaction.

“She’ll never trust a bush again,” one user said.

“Bro out of all the people lmao,” another wrote.

Although the video was all in good fun, the perpetrator did “feel bad” for triggering the uncomfortable episode.

An airline taking off from London’s Heathrow has experienced some trouble with an embittered passenger. The middle-aged woman, who arrived late to the boarding gate, wound up missing her flight. When an airline worker attempted to explain that regulations won’t allow passengers to board after the allotted time, an altercation occurred in which the woman verbally attacked the gate agent.

In similar fashion to Marvel’s Team Iron Man and Team Captain America debate, the original content creator who uploaded the video (below), posed the question of Team Lady or Team Airline to the comment section. Thankfully, with one small step for TikTok and one giant leap for humanity, fellow TikTokers rallied together in full support of the airline worker.

During the exchange, the gate agent explains that they aren’t permitted to allow passengers through security at a certain time. The woman responds by attempting to convince the worker that they arrived on time. The latter replies, “No you weren’t, you’re still here,” motioning to their place in an overflowing line.

The passenger doesn’t want to take ‘no’ for an answer, so she raises her voice for the next reply: “Oh my god, we were. Don’t you dare call me a liar. That’s not true.”

In a display of solidarity, the comments took the side of the gate agent. Some TikTok users merely wrote “Team Airline,” whereas others said, “You weren’t at the gate by the cutoff time. We aren’t sitting around waiting for you,” or simply, “Team worker. Always.”

There’s a moral grey area here, but it does seem fairly obvious who’s right and who’s wrong.

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There’s nothing as special in this life as having a friend, nothing can bring a smile to your face faster than knowing you’ve got someone on your team, acknowledging that someone has your back. In the same breath, there’s nothing more heartwrenching than feeling like you’re going through life without one, and the idea of going through life without friends has been the talk of social media through the last week after the vulnerability of a kid who was brave enough to ring a doorbell.

In a viral TikTok video, Shayden Walker approached his neighbor’s home and asked the people there if they knew of any nearby kids he could hang out with, and the reason behind his asking will bring tears to your eyes.

“I just wanted to see if you knew any kids around like 11 or 12, maybe because I need…I need some friends like really bad,” Shayden says to the man who answered the ring doorbell. After learning that there are kids of similar age nearby, Shayden reveals that those kids have turned into his bullies, and he doesn’t feel comfortable reaching out to them.

It’s not just the fact that he’s been bullied; the defeat in his face and voice as he explains it pulls on your heartstrings. We’ve all been there; kids can be cruel, but the devastation in his presence as he opens up is enough to ignite a fire in your heart; and his pleas for a friend reached someone who is determined to help him out of his current situation and into a realm where he feels confident enough to say hello and make a new friend, without worrying about the past and the hurt he’s been caused.

Rener Gracie felt compelled to get in touch with Walker’s family after the video reached him on social media, and there’s no one better to set out to help him.

You might recognize Gracie from his stint on Shark Tank, where he showcased the QuikFlip and made a deal with Lori Greiner. Gracie also has a Kickstarter open now for his next creation, the Sleeper Hold, and we think it’s safe to say that jiu-jitsu isn’t just in his blood; it’s at the root of everything he does.

Another thing at the root of what Gracie does is helping children, especially by building confidence and skill; sometimes, that makes all the difference. It’s hard to put your best foot forward when you’re not feeling confident, especially at the age of preteen awkwardness and the stage of life when you realize that there are social circles and sometimes not everyone you meet will necessarily be your close-knit group; it can be challenging. As adults, we too can face challenges when it comes to navigating our identity within social groups, despite having fully developed brains.

At the age that Shayden is at, friends are one of — if not the most important thing, and realizing that he’s just one of many kids who walk around and feel that loneliness daily is heartbreaking. It might sound cliche, but in becoming a parent, you acknowledge that a piece of your heart walks around in the world every day, but it doesn’t take being a parent to feel hurt when a child deals with bullying and isolation.

Sharing the same video to his own TikTok, Gracie offered to send Shayden to Torrance for the bullyproof summer camp he’s hosting and send the family to Disneyland.

“He needs help. We’ll fly this kid to Torrance for the Gracie Bullyproof Summer Camp (July 31 to Aug 4); all expenses paid (+ tickets to Disneyland) if anyone can connect us to the family. BullyproofSummerCamp.com — This is what we do.”

The camp helps kids learn the art of jiu-jitsu and how important it is to stand up for yourself. Gracie remarks that every kid will be bullied sometime in their life, which is true, and his camp helps to prepare children for what to do when that happens and have the skills to stand up for themselves if things escalate.

Gracie’s website shows some of the following highlights that happen when children advance through the week-long camp:

• “Bullies target children who don’t stand up for themselves. By giving your child the non-violent Gracie Jiu-Jitsu techniques to neutralize a physical attack, they will have the confidence to take a stand against bullies before the harassment spirals out of control.
• Verbal harassment is more common and oftentimes more damaging than physical harassment. To ensure your child is ready to identify and overcome these inevitable attacks, we conduct a series of specific role-playing exercises each day of the camp.”

We’ve yet to hear if the family has reached out to Gracie yet, but we have a feeling that they’ll find one another soon enough and that Walker’s story will soon have a very different message; one of overcoming loneliness, finding friends and more importantly — believing in the power of himself. His kindness and compassion for others were evident as he spoke in the few moments long video, and we have a feeling he’s on his way to meeting the kind of people who appreciate all the best things about him.

Here’s hoping we get an update video soon, and in the meantime, may we all remember that how we treat people matters.

WARNING: The following article contains mentions of child endangerment, child death, and vague descriptions of gore.

As if Squid Game hadn’t enthralled us enough in 2021, TikTok has found a novel by Aron Beauregard, a known splatterpunk author, called Playground. Beauregard’s gorefest hit the shelves in 2022, over a year after Korean drama series Squid Game aired on Netflix, and essentially retells the story of Hwang Dong-hyuk’s poverty-stricken free-for-all, but this time with children.

Playground sees a group of dysfunctional families, all of whom are struggling financially, approached to test out some revolutionary playground equipment. With the incentive that their participation will be handsomely rewarded, the families agree to partake and sign their children up. Soon after, the adults find themselves locked in a viewing room and forced to watch on the monitors as their children are brutally slaughtered, all for the sadistic entertainment of Geraldine, the creator.

TikTok seems to have waited a whole other year before discovering Playground, but now that content creators are going ape over one of Beauregard’s latest, all those uncomfortable emotions have come swarming back. Needless to say, Beauregard outdid himself with Playground, and TikTok users are struggling to pry their eyes away. Even worse, some of them can’t make it past the first 40 pages.

As we’ll remember from Squid Game, the participants are presented with seemingly harmless ‘challenges’ to complete, but soon discover that one small slip-up will result in their immediate ‘disqualification’ from the competition.

In the same vein, the children in Playground are tricked into believing that they’ll win a substantial amount of money for the families by simply having fun. They’re forced to make difficult decisions and grow up drastically fast in order to survive when it’s revealed that Geraldine is an infamous child murderer.

If gore churns your stomach, this definitely isn’t the book for you, but if you’ve shamelessly enjoyed Saw and The Human Centipede — or you loved Squid Game — then maybe this is right up your alley. We won’t judge you for enjoying Playground… we promise.