May 2026 – Write From Karen

I killed my phone.

Correction, someone, or some entity, built an evil virus and attached it to a link that I must have clicked on at some point, because one day, my phone flickered, flashed and basically lost it’s computer mind. It’s zeros and ones programming became a jumbled mess that not even my phone’s very intelligent brain could decipher.

In other words, my phone caught a virus.

Everything I clicked on popped up a Temu ad, (hmm … coincidence? You tell me), and once in a while, a message would show up, “You have 287 viruses – click here to clean them off.” Yeah buddy, fool me once…

Of course I didn’t click on it.

The damage was done. I officially became the proud owner of a pocket-sized piece of junk.

Cool.

So, I started researching how to reset the phone back to factory settings. Wipe it clean, start over. I wasn’t too terribly upset by this, I’ve had the phone for five years, it was probably time to wipe the dirty slate clean and start over but … hold on …

I’ve had my phone for five years. When we went on our last Norwegian cruise I was unable to downlaod their app because my phone was too old … so maybe I needed to skip the wipe and upgrade to a new phone, instead.

I started looking for a new Android phone. Yep, I’m an Android robot kind of girl. I loathe Apple products. No disrespect to my Apple readers out there, but Apple is GROSSLY overpriced and then you’re FORCED to buy their products, and their products only, if you want to continue using your Apple phone. And then, because you’re forced to buy their products in order to make the Apple device work, you’re also forced to spend a stupid amount for said product.

No thanks. I like options.

I’ve never owned an Apple and I never will. I’m sure they’re great – people wouldn’t buy them if they were junk, but I can’t help but wonder, is the product really that superior or is it because it has a cute apple icon on the back?

It doesn’t matter – you do you.

I knew I would have to spend some money, but I was not willing to pay more than $500, if I could help it. And luckily for me, I found some options.

Kevin has been using a Motorola for a few years now and he loves it. He has one of those phones with the cool stylus, even though he rarely uses the stylus, he likes having the stylus in case he wants to use it. Ha! Which, even though the writer in me is drawn to a phone with a stylus, I knew I would never use so it was best to just not worry about that feature.

And I knew if I went into a Verizon store, they would show me all of their shiny, impressive phones with a hefty price tag and I would be tempted, perhaps even walk out of the store with one and, no, I didn’t want to be tempted when I could likely find something just as cool without the price tag.

Amazon, here I come.

And as usual, Amazon didn’t let me down. The heavens opened up, the Angels sang and I found my new phone.

I bought a Motorola Moto G Power and she’s a beaut.

I’ve had her, (yes, she’s a her), about two weeks now and I’m loving her so far. There is one thing I’m not real happy about, the headphone jack. To my surprise, there are quite a few phones nowadays without a headphone jack at all. I guess the manufacturers are assuming people will just use wireless/Bluetooth earbuds. Which, are nice, but I’m old fashioned, I like my headphone jack. I try not to use very much data, I’m always on WIFI if I can help it, so, I haven’t had the best luck with my Bluetooth earbuds working all of the time. And I know, Bluetooth is supposed to work whether your connected or not, but I’m an idiot and am probably doing something wrong but … I like having a backup plan, okay? 😀

The phone jack on the phone is too big for any of the headphones that I own. I mean, it works, it’s just super loose and loses connection so when I’m on the treadmill and the music cuts off abruptly, I get ticked. Who wants to walk on the treadmill to begin with, let alone with NO music? Um, no. So, in a huff, and pretty annoyed, I thought, “FINE. I’ll buy a pair of Motorola headphones, ya big buttheads” The headphones came and they still didn’t fit!! I think Motorola thought, “ya’ll are complaining so much about not having a headphone jack, fine, we’ll put a jack in but we’re not happy about it and we don’t care if it doesn’t fit.”

Rude.

But, Kevin being the clever man that he is, found a workaround. He bought an adapter. It’s a USB C to a headphone jack adapter, to be more precise and it works like a charm.

So THERE Motorola. haha

The data transfer itself was a breeze. I went from a Samsung to the Motorola with nary a hitch, just transferred the SIM card from one device to the other, said yes, you have my permission to transfer data, (though I was worried it would also transfer the viruses, – it didn’t) and badda-bing-badda-boom, my data transferred over and I was now an official Motorola user.

Now that the dust has settled, I got to thinking about cell phones in general; about how much we rely on these little suckers and how our children really have never known a world without cell phones.

I’m a Gen Xer so I remember a world without cell phones. (Actually – if you want to get technical – I straddle the line between Baby Boomer and Gen X – but I digress).

I vaguely remember the days of rotary phones. Oh yes, I used them, back in the day. I remember stickling my finger into the hole and pulling up and around the dial. I remember the sound it made as it turned. It was always fun when you were dialing a number with a nine in it. If you made a mistake, you had to hang up and try again, and it took 30 minutes to dial anyone, but eventually, it happened.

I remember our family phone with the long cord so you could take the receiver with you into the next room for privacy. I remember that cord becoming so stretched out it would coil in on itself and it was hard to untangle, and especially annoying when you were trying to make a fast exit from the room, for privacy, but the tangled cord prevented you from going as far as you wanted to go.

It was always a gamble to call someone because you never knew if the person’s family member would answer and then you would have to shyly ask if so-and-so was home and then wait to hear them loudly call throughout the house that they had a phone all. There was very little privacy back in those days – your family pretty much always knew your business.

Back in those days, you sort of had to hope your loved one got to where he was going and wait for that confirmation phone call that he made it in one piece all while nervously chewing your fingernails.

Or, if you were expecting a call, you had to sit close to the phone all night so you wouldn’t miss it. There was no text me when you’re ready! If you missed the call, you were SOL. Shouldn’t have gone to the bathroom.

I remember the days when you had to memorize people’s phone numbers, or carry an address book around so that when you had to call someone, you had their number close. I couldn’t recite our sons’ phone numbers now if my life depended on it.

Then came the cordless phones. How cool! You could easily carry the phone around with you, or go into another room, without having to worry about strangling yourself in the cord.

We were late to the game as far as buying a cell phone. I had a flip phone, (loved that thing), a slide phone, (a keyboard!) and then finally a smart phone.

I remember getting rid of our landline and feeling squeamish about that as we were now fully depending on technology to communicate with the outside world.

Now, the thought of having a landline is almost laughable.

I remember the days when a phone was used JUST as a phone, now our phones do our thinking for us.

I remember using ACTUAL maps – the kind we spread out over our dashboard and ran our fingers across as we traveled. Now – our phones simply tell us which way to turn and we blindly obey.

Remember ACTUAL cameras? With interchangeable lens and film we had to physically take to the store to get developed?? Now anyone can be a decent photographer, just point and tap. It’s virtually impossible to take a bad picture with your phone – especially when there ware so many filters to make it look even better.

When you think back, and really pay attention to the timeline of phones and the method of communicating with one another, it’s really quite astounding how much progress we’ve made.

We somehow survived without a cell phone “in the old days”, now I can’t imagine life without one.

I’m a language nerd.

Some would call me a Grammar Nazi – I can certainly be a “Karen” about language, at times.

My co-workers even gave me a t-shirt that read, “I am silently judging your grammar.”

And I do – I ABSOLUTELY judge a person by the way they talk and CERTAINLY by the way they write. And before you puff in self-righteous condemnation, so do a lot of people, whether they’re aware of it or not. Especially employers. Does having a proper grasp of language make you smarter?

Yes, actually, I believe it does, to an extent.

I graduated from college with a Bachelor’s of Science, (they don’t call it BS for nothing) with a major in Technical Writing and a minor in Creative Writing. It was really fun to work for but I haven’t really done anything with it.

But isn’t that normally the case with a college degree?

I mean, it’s Technical Writing – even writing it puts me to sleep. (And for those that don’t know what Technical Writing is – why would you? In a nutshell, it’s reading technical manuals, instructions, reports and regurgitating it into bite-sized, relatable language that a “normal” person – i.e. – not the overly-clever professional person who wrote it – can digest and understand. Basically – simplistic word vomit).

But language … is becoming a lost art. Young people today take language for granted – they twist it into a pretzel and use slang instead of “proper” language. They don’t bother to enunciate let alone know how to pronounce words correctly. They have no idea what the difference is between their, there and they’re, or God forbid, use lose correctly, (most people spell it loose).

And don’t even get me STARTED on comprehension – news flash – there isn’t any.

To a language nerd? These missteps, this Laissez-faire attitude, makes my eyes, ears and brain bleed.

We all make grammar mistakes – I’m certainly no exception. But there is a difference between not knowing and not caring – most people don’t care to know.

And spelling? Forget-about-it, (insert Godfather voice). Why bother with correct spelling? We have spell check – the lazy man’s tool to actually using one’s head.

So, not only do I care about language, but I’m showcasing that most people DON’T care and don’t see, or bother to understand, the importance of language.

You know the saying, “Sticks and stone may break my bones but words will never hurt me?” Yeah – I call bullshit. Words, language, most CERTAINLY can hurt us – it can even stoke emotional embers to life and provoke irrational behavior and uncharacteristic acts of violence.

As evidenced by the most recent assassination attempt on President Trump. Language most certainly affects us all, whether we want to admit it or not.

The problem is, a lot of people choose to pooh-pooh this fact away. Or, they don’t want to take the time to really SEE, let alone UNDERSTAND the importance of language. And mean-spirited people with evil intentions know this and use this to mold people into their foot soldiers or gullible puppets. If people don’t understand 1. how powerful language really is and 2. turn off their emotions and activate their critical thinking skills, (if such a thing exists – but that’s a topic for another post), then they will be, and currently ARE, being manipulated. And I don’t know about you folks, but NO ONE controls me, my mind or my actions.

NO. ONE.

And if you feel the same, then I would encourage you to take language more seriously, to understand how language is used to manipulate people and then to activate your mental shield and guard against sneaky persuasion tactics spewed as Gospel truth by “influencers.”

Case in point: The rhetoric of Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson. Two people whom I used to really enjoy listening to but who have now morphed into these unrecognizable people who spout nonsense, contradict themselves and who are hell bent on making a sect of people into walking demons. I have no idea what happened, I just know SOMETHING happened to change their tune.

Stop. I know what you’re thinking and OF COURSE they have the right to ask questions, to spark conversation, debate, but the WAY they do it is what I would like to call attention to. And once you realize what they’re doing, can recognize the sneaky little tactics they take in order to worm their message into your mind maze, then you are better equipped to discern what is actually truth and what is false with a little truth sprinkled on top.

This is Jeremy Boreing. He used to be the CEO of the Daily Wire but he left, not sure why, and has started his own channel. I used to watch him, Ben Shapio, Matt Walsh, Michael Knowles, Andrew Klavin and yes, Candace Owens, when she was part of the group, debate/talk about political issues. I learned a lot by listening to them and it was interesting to see them disagree and DEBATE the issue, not storm off in a huff and plan their murder.

What a novel concept, I know.

Did I 100% agree with everything they said? Of course not, I’m not in a cult, I do have a brain that I take out and dust off from time-to-time, but they brought up interesting points that tickled my cerebral cortex and I enjoyed the brain exercise.

Those hamster wheels in my brain do get rusty at times.

I know this video is on the long side, no one has an attention span for long-form content anymore, but it’s worth a listen. You likely won’t understand some of it, I certainly didn’t and still don’t, but it’s worth watching simply to introduce you to the fact that people, not just Candace and Tucker, but a lot of outspoken, smart(ish), people use these sorts of tactics to manipulate others into agreeing with them, to giving them money or to promote dark and dangerous thoughts, but if people are aware this type of language manipulation is happening, then I’m hopeful people will pause, put up a stop sign and THINK about what is really being said, or, not said.

Here’s a timeline of the video if you want to skip around:

00:47 Loose Change, 9/11, and the Illusion of Insight
03:06 Pre-suasion: Telling You What You See
04:42 Tucker Carlson on Pearl Harbor
09:30 “Obviously,” “Clearly,” “Of Course”
13:08 The First Deception in the Garden
14:43 Candace Owens: “We Don’t Know Know, But We Know”
18:41 Eugenics, Overpopulation, Climate Panic
22:29 The Contagions of the 2020s
23:40 The Current Anti-Israel / Antisemitism Wave
29:05 Authority Transfer and the Moon Landing
32:33 Healthy Skepticism vs. Reflexive Cynicism