Viral Video ‘Karen’ Mistaken For Penn State Employee
With literally hundreds of thousands of Penn Staters in the world, you’re bound to mix a few up once in a while.
A flock of Twitter uses did just that Wednesday afternoon when they mistakenly identified a viral video star as a Penn State employee. The woman, who identified herself as Kathy Hill, got into a scuffle with a York County Red Lobster manager and her staff after demanding a refund following slow service on Mother’s Day.
According to a bystander in the video, some customers had been waiting for nearly three hours for their food before the dispute broke out.
Video of the altercation surfaced in a tweet Tuesday night, which had garnered more than 136,000 likes and nearly 11 million views just 24 hours later. The fight escalated enough to include hair-pulling, a few punches, and plenty of sentence enhancers — the whole nine yards.
Virtual bystanders began speculating on the woman’s identity and incorrectly identified her as Kathy Hill, the director of the Center for Science and the Schools (CSATS) at Penn State’s College of Education. The university quickly responded to these claims a number of times, each featuring the same two messages.
The behavior in this video is unacceptable and inappropriate. However, this individual is not affiliated with our University and is not the employee referenced in the tweet from our University.
— Penn State (@penn_state) May 13, 2020
We request that you remove this tweet as to not share misinformation.
— Penn State (@penn_state) May 13, 2020
“We agree the behavior in this video is unacceptable and inappropriate and, when notified of its existence just a few hours ago, we began looking into the matter,” Penn State said in a statement. “After our evaluation, we can say that the individual in the video is not affiliated with our University. She has been incorrectly identified and it is unfortunate that this misinformation was spread so rapidly.”
While some viewers came to Hill’s defense and pointed out York is nearly 100 miles from Happy Valley, a few anti-Penn State Twitter trolls had a good time poking fun at the university for the altercation.
https://t.co/pKkBIHxJEK
— Trill F. Collins, Esq. (@BXSTXN0) May 13, 2020
mighty fine people you hire down in the valley – just like Kathy Hill! https://t.co/2XGwUC8lY6
Moral of the story: If you start swinging fists over some cheddar bay biscuits, be prepared to be mistaken for a Penn Stater and subsequently ridiculed on the Internet for it.
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