KING KARINE ISN'T ASKING FOR YOUR PERMISSION
- De-fynit
- Mar 20
- 5 min read
On Building an Empire, Motherhood, and the Cost of
Being Visible
Karine started out in Ireland doing Snapchat Q&As, and her followers named themselves before she even realised she had a fanbase. They called themselves Kingons. The emoji: a meteor. "Because I'm from another planet," she says. "In fact, I'm not even real at this point."
It's a joke. But there's something true underneath it: the strange, disorienting experience of being so visible that you stop feeling like a person and start feeling like a brand. Karine knows this intimately. She's built an empire on authenticity whilst watching people dissect every choice she makes: her body, her pregnancy, her daughter, her name choices, how she dresses, how she mothers.
