Phillies Karen’s identity is internet vigilantes’ latest target
A New Jersey woman's name was trending on X after social media sleuths accused her of taking a home run ball at a Phillies game in Miami. They had the wrong person.
A woman with short blond hair from New Jersey wants to set the record straight: She is not a Phillies fan, nor was she at the Phillies’ 9-3 win over the Marlins in Miami last week.
But that didn’t stop a barrage of social media sleuths from harassing her online for about a day and a half, even pushing her full name to trend on X. It’s not the first time something like this has happened.
The woman — who did not respond to The Inquirer’s interview request — was wrongly dubbed “Phillies Karen” as a subset of the internet attempted to identify the woman responsible for taking Harrison Bader’s home run ball from a dad who snagged it from the stands and gave it to his 9-year-old son.
It’s the latest example of the internet diving into vigilante efforts with little payoff.
“OK everyone, I’m NOT the crazy Philly Mom (though I sure would love to be as thin as she is and move as fast)” the New Jersey woman fans purported to be the Karen wrote on her Facebook page Saturday afternoon. “And I’m a Red Sox fan.”
She added in a Facebook comment, “Never mind that I wasn’t anywhere near Florida,” and that “I have about 20 years and 50 pounds on that woman.”
From there, internet detectives honed in on a second unverified suspect, an employee for New Jersey’s Hammonton School District.
“The woman identified on social media as ‘Phillies Karen’ is not, and has never been an employee of the Hammonton Public Schools located in Hammonton, New Jersey,” the district said in a Facebook post. “Anyone who works for our school district, attended as a student, or lives in our community would obviously have caught the ball bare-handed in the first place, avoiding this entire situation!”
The ordeal mirrors other incidents where internet vigilantes stepped in — for better or worse. Now it leaves spectators wondering, how far is too far? And what happens when amateur detectives get it wrong?
Online vigilantism dates to the 1990s, along with doxing, the practice of hunting down and exposing someone’s personal details. While it’s not new, the practice has become increasingly normalized within internet culture.
In modern history, doxing has been practiced among internet warriors identifying extremists who participated in neo-Nazi marches, unveiling an alleged affair at a tech company, and in a severe case, misidentifying the Boston Marathon bomber.
The practice is viewed as a way for internet sleuths to band together and collectively punch up against people who, say, take a baseball from a young fan — or maybe a tennis player’s hat.
The end result can range from the vindication of positively identifying someone to a slew of memes (Cruella de Phil, anyone?) to a new internet conspiracy theory, or even a Halloween costume.
Just last week, a Polish millionaire and CEO was identified and called out by internet sleuths for taking the hat of tennis player Kamil Majchrzak, reaching over a young fan’s grasp. That ID was correct and the frenzy pushed Piotr Szczerek to post an apology on social media and return the hat to the child.
In July, the internet collectively salivated over an alleged affair unfolding via the Kiss Cam at a Coldplay concert. Within the day, the couple was identified as the CEO and the head of human resources at tech company Astronomer. Both resigned. The affair was even spoofed by Phillie Phanatic, among many, many others.
And it’s not the first time something like this has happened in the Philly region.
In 2023, Candice Bogar was misidentified as a woman whose racist rant in Amy’s Family Pizzeria in Hatboro went viral. In turn, she received waves of online harassment.
The internet was looking for a woman who would later be identified by Hatboro police as Rita Bellew, who was charged with ethnic intimidation and harassment for how she spoke to the pizzaiolo behind the counter. But before Bellew was named, several people on social media wrongly doxed Bogar along with two other uninvolved Montgomery County women.
The release of their phone numbers and addresses exposed the women to a slew of unwanted and threatening phone calls and emails, leaving them worried for their jobs and safety. Local police issued two separate warnings to stop harassing the women.
A viral incident at Lincoln Financial Field where an attendee was caught heckling a female Green Bay Packers fan ended up costing him his job after online sleuths figured out that he worked at a DEI-focused management consulting firm. He was also banned for life from the Linc.
But in Phillies Karen’s case, some wonder whether folks looking for justice are taking things too far.
“[There is] blatant doxing happening right now over the Phillies Karen,” one user wrote on Reddit. “What is wrong with some of you?”
They added, “I’ve seen at least three separate names, Facebook pages, etc. floating around. You’re potentially ruining the lives of totally innocent people … going around playing detective and just doxing the wrong people is f—."
A separate Reddit thread agreed and said they thought doxing was a step too far.
“She ALREADY got punished,” the Redditor wrote. “She was booed out of the stadium. She was blasted on national TV. She either already learned her lesson or she CAN’T learn her lesson.”
For now, the woman remains unidentified. If past incidents are any sort of preview, she might want to keep it that way.