It started with a Covid-era tussle over social distancing at a New Jersey shopping center identified for its high-end shops.

Ijeoma Ukenta had gone there to make use of a coupon for a free pair of Victoria’s Secret underwear. One other shopper, Abigail Elphick, acquired too shut, Ms. Ukenta mentioned, main her to ask the lady to maneuver six ft away.

Ms. Elphick complained to a cashier. Ms. Ukenta started recording the incident on her telephone. The drama escalated rapidly from there.

Ms. Elphick, who’s white, lunged at Ms. Ukenta, who’s Black, after which fell to the ground in tears, sobbing and begging that she cease recording her “psychological breakdown.”

Ms. Ukenta summoned safety officers; Ms. Elphick referred to as the police. For quarter-hour, the recording continued.

To viewers of what rapidly was a viral video, Ms. Elphick grew to become generally known as the “Victoria’s Secret Karen,” a villain in a now-familiar style of on-line fare.

However individuals watching on-line or on the retailer because the episode performed out didn’t know that Ms. Elphick was disabled, with a protracted historical past of medical and psychological situations, in accordance with authorized filings that shed new gentle on the encounter.

Such shaming movies have emerged in recent times as potent instruments for exposing the informal and routine racism that Black individuals face of their day by day lives. However two years after the Victoria’s Secret incident, the court docket paperwork, filed in latest weeks, present how they’ll additionally distort difficult interactions, lowering them to two-dimensional accounts.

Ms. Elphick, 27, lives in a fancy reserved for residents with mental and developmental disabilities. Her habits stemmed not from a “race-based” downside, in accordance with a criticism filed by her attorneys, however from worry that being filmed would result in the lack of her house and job.

Ms. Ukenta, in her lawsuit, additionally described being motivated by worry — “keenly conscious that if the police had been referred to as, she, a Black lady, will not be believed.”

On the time of the July 2021 encounter, Ms. Ukenta had a longtime on-line presence and a YouTube channel, the place she supplied vignettes about gardening, meals, abroad journey and cultural occasions in Newark, the place she lives.

She posted the Victoria’s Secret video in installments on a number of social media websites, and the transient encounter within the Mall at Quick Hills in Millburn, one of many wealthiest communities in New Jersey, rapidly tapped the web’s rage.

Ms. Ukenta’s first video, “Karen Goes Loopy Half 1,” was seen 2.6 million instances on YouTube. An unrelated YouTube channel, Public Freakouts Unleashed, ranked it No. 1 in a compilation of the “High 25 Most Infamous Karen Movies of ALL TIME.”

A GoFundMe marketing campaign Ms. Ukenta created — “Assist Me Defend Myself Towards Karen” — generated donations of greater than $104,000.

The incident was held up as an excessive instance of the “Karen” meme: an encounter between a Black particular person and a white lady wherein the white lady calls the authorities, probably endangering the Black particular person because of this.

“This how they be getting us killed, you see that?” Ms. Ukenta says on the video.

However the conflict and its aftermath had been much more difficult than they appeared.

In July, Ms. Ukenta filed a lawsuit towards Ms. Elphick, Victoria’s Secret, the mall and its safety firm, which she argues had been grossly negligent, sluggish to reply and handled her because the antagonist slightly than a sufferer of a fellow shopper’s tried assault. Within the video, Ms. Ukenta might be heard asking why the safety officers, who don’t seem till a retailer worker goes to fetch them, are taking so lengthy to reach.

“They had been extraordinarily dismissive towards her,” Ms. Ukenta’s criticism states, “and had been detached and nonchalant about her issues for her security.”

When the police arrived, Ms. Elphick informed an officer that her panic stemmed from worry that the video can be printed and trigger her to lose her job and her house, in accordance with a police report.

As photographs of Ms. Elphick ricocheted around the globe, an internet commenter urged fellow viewers to contact a college district the place Ms. Elphick had had an internship to demand that their “racist worker” be fired. She started getting harassing calls and as lately as April contacted the police to report {that a} man who referred to the Victoria’s Secret video had referred to as her and threatened to rape and kill her, court docket data present.

“I used to be horrified,” Tom Toronto, president of Bergen County’s United Method, which runs the residential advanced the place Ms. Elphick lives, mentioned concerning the video’s aftermath and what he referred to as a “whole lack of perspective and proportion.”

“She has a dysfunction. She has nervousness,” he mentioned. “She had a meltdown. Then the world we dwell in took over and it grew to become one thing completely totally different than what it truly was.”

Ms. Elphick, by way of her lawyer, declined to remark.

Not one of the movies on Ms. Ukenta’s YouTube channel have had extra viewers than these centered on Ms. Elphick’s habits, and her YouTube channel now has greater than 26,000 subscribers.

Ms. Elphick’s counterclaim argues that her proper to privateness was violated after Ms. Ukenta shared private details about her. However the authorized submitting additionally highlights newer, unrelated movies Ms. Ukenta has printed because the Quick Hills mall incident which might be important of a landlord and a number of other retail shops; the filings factors to these movies as proof that she has pursued a broader sample of “harassment.”

“Ukenta has made a job out of preying on people from behind a keyboard,” the criticism states, “inciting hate whereas making the most of victims and the general public at giant for her personal monetary achieve.”

It’s an accusation that Ms. Ukenta’s lawyer, Tracey C. Hinson, strenuously rejects, and one which she mentioned solely underscored the knowledge of the impulse that led Ms. Ukenta to refuse to cease recording within the first place.

“She knew that in Millburn, New Jersey, she wouldn’t be believed,” Ms. Hinson mentioned. “And that’s precisely what has transpired.”

Ms. Ukenta has additionally continued to publish movies that don’t depict battle, together with constructive eating and buying experiences.

Attorneys for the lingerie retailer and the safety firm didn’t reply to requests for remark. A lawyer for the mall declined to remark, citing the lawsuit.

It’s unclear how Ms. Ukenta used the cash she raised by way of GoFundMe. When reached by telephone, she mentioned she was not in a position to instantly talk about the matter.

However Ms. Ukenta has mentioned on-line that she believed it was solely honest that she ought to profit financially from video content material broadly seen on social media. “Why wouldn’t I need to make $ off MY movies if everybody else is,” she wrote on X, the positioning previously generally known as Twitter, two months after the incident.

Ms. Hinson mentioned she couldn’t quantify how a lot revenue, if any, Ms. Ukenta earned from on-line exercise, and he or she careworn that her shopper’s social media presence was irrelevant to the recorded interplay at Victoria’s Secret.

“It’s her proper,” Ms. Hinson mentioned. “She has a proper to let the general public know what occurred to her.”

“That is nothing however a ploy designed to disparage,” she added.

Movies of white ladies who’re fast to both cry or name the authorities, often on individuals of shade, grew to become widespread through the pandemic and elevated in frequency as protests over the police killing of George Floyd, a Black man, swept the nation. In 2018, a San Francisco lady who referred to as the authorities a few Black lady promoting bottled water and a New York lady with an unleashed canine who dialed 911 after a tense 2020 encounter with a Black bird-watcher in Central Park grew to become infamous early examples.

Apryl Williams, an assistant professor on the College of Michigan who has studied movies that depict white ladies as entitled aggressors, mentioned so-called Karen memes can serve a beneficial function within the battle for racial fairness.

That they’ve appeared much less incessantly within the final yr, she mentioned, was a sign that they are often efficient instruments for exposing racism.

“Folks have realized that there are social ramifications for being famous as a Karen,” she mentioned, referring to the potential lack of employment and social standing.

Professor Williams mentioned she was not acquainted with Ms. Ukenta’s YouTube channel or her different movies. However their quantity doesn’t invalidate the habits depicted, she mentioned.

“Positive — perhaps it generates cash for her,” Professor Williams mentioned. “However perhaps she’s saying, ‘That is Karen habits and I’m documenting it for everyone to see.’ ”

It’s unsurprising that Victoria’s Secret Karen has remained a cultural touchstone even two years after the incident, in accordance with lecturers who research media anthropology.

On-line posts that spotlight heightened feelings like anger, outrage or disgust are likely to unfold “farthest and quickest,” mentioned James P. Walsh, director of the graduate criminology division on the College of Ontario Institute of Know-how.

An aura of credibility then attaches to the content material as soon as it’s broadly appreciated or shared — affirmation that, in flip, expands its attain.

“It simply type of snowballs,” Professor Walsh mentioned, “and will get out of hand.”