After posting a video in which he harassed an emotionally terrified woman while exposing her license plate number and home, Karlos Dillard is now attempting to profit off his pursuit of public humiliation.
Dillard, who has over 20 thousand Instagram followers and claims to be a stand-up comedian, posted a video Monday in which he points the camera at a woman who, emotionally distraught, shields her face and cries out that she doesn’t understand what’s going on and that he’s attacking her.
Dillard states in the video that the woman, who he labeled “Karen,” cut him off in traffic while flipping him off, before Dillard followed her home. While the woman vehemently denied his claims and there’s no evidence of these actions, he focused the camera on her license plate and house.
“You flipped me off and you thought you could get away with it. You didn’t think I would find you,” Dillard said to the woman.
This Karen cut me off, break checked some almost causing a accident flipped me off and called me out of my name. She didn’t know I had time today. #karenareyouokay #karen #blacktwitter pic.twitter.com/sQsKpLcE6D
— Karlos Dillard (@karlosdillard_) June 23, 2020
When a man on the balcony of a nearby apartment building yelled at Dillard to leave her alone, he responded that the woman called him the n-word and needed to apologize. Several other people came over to ask about the situation, some of whom said they witnessed the woman cutting Dillard off in her car.
He posted the fifteen-minute long video on Instagram along with a parade of Instagram stories ranting about the situation after he got home, including some promoting t-shirt sales referencing “Karen.” With three t-shirt designs already up for sale, Dillard has fended off critics who argue he’s exploiting the situation for economic gain with an argument concerning race.
“Get your shirt, and before you come outta you mouth about making a profit off of pain look up US slavery,” one of the t-shirt sale captions reads.
In a similar May 28 video Dillard posted to twitter, he is shown returning food to a female restaurant worker. He stated in the caption of the video that, after acting in a racist manner, the lady used the n-word. In the video, however, he only stated that she said “whatever.”
“I just had a racist Asian lady demand to see my ID and my phone to prove that I was a postmates driver while I was picking up the food. After I refuse to show her my ID. I told her she was being racist and she said whatever N—-r,” the caption reads.
Author and podcast co-host Jesse Singal condemned Dillard for his suspicious merchandise sales following the two incidents in a tweet Tuesday.
“CRAZY coincidence: @wypipo_h8, who calls himself a ‘viral video star,’ and who sells edgy anti-racist t-shirts, just happens to be getting called the N-word regularly by Seattleites. The actual incidents are never caught on film but he always posts a confrontation right after.”
In the last half of the original Instagram video, Dillard returned to talk to the woman with his phone taping their conversation hidden in his pocket. She admitted to accidentally cutting him off on the road but desperately explained that her heart belongs with the Black Lives Matter movement and that any perceived ill-will on her part is accidental as she doesn’t know the streets well. She didn’t admit to any name-calling.
“Please forgive me! I’m sorry,” she said. “You don’t know how much my heart is just breaking right now because you don’t know how much I love humanity.”
Dillard responded saying he didn’t have time to hear her story and left.
“I don’t want to hear your white tears,” Dillard said.
