The “Hawk Tuah Girl” was called “the most famous person on the planet right now” on Joe Rogan’s podcast. It’s debatable, but she has to be the most famous person in recent years to gain notoriety through onomatopoeia.
The Hawk Tuah Girl (which is not her real name, or even a particularly accurate description of her phase of life) went extremely viral last week, thanks to a video in which she evocatively described oral sex. But it’s best known by one demographic: heterosexual men. In a completely informal and completely incomplete survey of Vox staff, its existence reached a cross-section of heterosexual men, while others in the office had absolutely no idea what it was about. And damn, that made things weird.
Because I’m a new Hawk Tuah Girl myself, I asked its core audience to help me explain the phenomenon. Because his rise to fame involves both innuendo and sound effects, Vox gave these heterosexual men anonymity so they could speak frankly and freely.
And it turns out that whether or not you know who Hawk Tuah Girl is can say a lot about you, your algorithm, and your online presence—not to mention what internet fame actually means and to whom.
Who is Hawk Tuah Girl and how did she become famous?
Before becoming known as Hawk Tuah Girl, Hawk Tuah Girl was known as Hailey Welch. But Welch’s destiny changed forever when she appeared in a bar-hopping girl video from creators Tim & Dee TV. These kinds of videos, usually featuring beautiful women who may or may not be slightly drunk, are a subset of the broader “TikToker talking to people on the street” genre.
In the video, Welch is asked, “What’s the one move in bed that drives a man crazy every time?”
“You have to give them that ‘hawk tuah’ and spit on it,” Welch said with a laugh. “You understand me?”
That’s when Welch’s perfect onomatopoeia overshadows whoever she is. Her inner life, her desires, her fears, her being – all of this fades away because she produced such a rich and precise sound effect for a specific type of fellatio.
Hailey Welch is no more. Hawk Tuah Girl is born and people love Hawk Tuah Girl.
She was hailed as a heroine, a revolutionary, and the It girl of the moment. Hawk Tuah was remembered and emulated, and people saw Hawk Tuahs everywhere now that Hawk Tuah Girl had opened their eyes to the Hawk Tuahs around them. There were also, as Cut notes, inaccurate reports that she had been fired from her job, but netizens were quick to point out the misinformation and protect her young legacy. The Hawk Tuah Girl tradition grew and grew.
Chad, a straight man who works in crypto-adjacent finance, told me he first discovered the video last Wednesday or Thursday. Friends were sending him the video throughout the day. When asked who these friends were, he said, “Mostly straight, white men.”
“How many women sent you the video?” » I asked him.
Despite receiving the video and links to it multiple times, Chad refrained from clicking. He tried to sit still. He didn’t want to participate in another meme. Around the same time, Chad noticed that someone had created an alternative currency “Hawk Tuah” to take advantage of the moment. Within hours, he said, the volatile currency was worth “tens of millions” of dollars. If financiers create crap money, that’s usually a sign to Chad that the meme in question may not merit further examination. Perhaps thumbnails and still images would be enough to understand.
However, Chad eventually gave in.
“It was pretty visceral and disgusting, to be honest,” Chad told Vox, explaining his initial reaction to the video. His disgust came not from the sexual act in particular, but from the incredibly clear audio of a literal spit shot that arguably veered into loogie territory. “It’s very well micronated,” he told me.
The video also surfaced on George’s feed last week, via Instagram Reels. George, a 30-year-old straight man, didn’t have the negative reaction to the sound like Chad did. He found it funny, if not kind of charming.
“Even though I found it kind of endearing and kind of funny, I thought she was pretty enlightened and would probably regret it,” George told Vox. “I thought it would probably be at least a minor viral moment, but I didn’t think it would grow to prominence this quickly.”
I asked George and Chad if there was a reason they thought this video caught fire so quickly. Straight men tend to be fans of both funny noises and oral sex. Conventionally attractive women who say racy things have long fascinated popular culture.
Both mentioned that it was the seriousness that really stood out. Social media is curated, so much so that even these kinds of TikTokers and content creators talking to women at a party tends to be a cliché. “Hawk Tuah” was a moment that didn’t feel like that.
“It was a moment of innocence and complete honesty, probably,” Chad said. “She was, or seemed to be, unapologetically herself for two seconds. »
Cameron, a self-described “too connected” heterosexual, put it more simply: he asked me to think about Occam’s Razor.
” You ask me why the attractive young woman talks about oral sex, and how it’s her favorite thing, and the answer to all problems “Will this go viral? ” did he declare. “Straight men are exactly who you think they are…I don’t want to be complacent and say: Yeah man, we’re so stupid. But somehow, we are like that.
Will Hawk Tuah Girl be Hawk Tuah Girl forever?
One fascinating aspect of Hawk Tuah Girl’s rise to fame is that there were still people who hadn’t heard of her yet. For the record, the difference between my personal and professional life was that by Monday morning, straight people knew everything about her, and people who weren’t needed more explanation.
Perhaps it’s because even though the Internet has seemingly made the world smaller, there are still pockets and mini-worlds of the Internet that we’re not aware of – through cookies, through algorithms, through interests.
Cameron, the very connected guy who is probably online right now, mentioned another Internet hero called Oilers Girl. Oilers Girl (not her real name) became a crowd sensation during the NHL playoffs and went viral in what he calls “the Internet of Barstool,” but may not have been successful to break through to the general public. (“Barstool” for Barstool Sports, the long-running digital media company founded by Dave Portnoy, known for its ardent fan base and intentionally crude culture.)
“Oilers Girl and Hawk Tuah Girl—they’re the Chappell Roan and Charli XCX of the straight internet right now,” Cameron told me, trying to speak a language we both knew. Cameron didn’t know how to pronounce Chappell Roan, but that’s when it clicked for me, and I no longer felt like I was talking to an alien.
It’s the idea that content on the internet and social media can seem inevitable and unavoidable to you and not even register as an incident to a different audience. As small as the Internet seems to be and as seemingly connected as we are, it’s hard to know these days how big something really is. Whether it’s Hawk Tuah Girl, Oilers Girl, or a “Let’s find the remix” joke, the relative size of a meme is harder to perceive due to the divide of our different internets. It seems that algorithms and “For You” pages have become so good at catering to specific individuals that the result is a lack of perspective.
What all this means for the woman behind the meme remains to be seen.
Maybe Hawk Tuah Girl will rise even higher and become even more famous. According to the New York Post, she has already sold some $65,000 worth of Hawk Tuah Girl products, and there are rumors that she is signing with a Hollywood agency. Unlike many Internet main characters, Hawk Tuah Girl seems willing to monetize her attention.
But as she becomes more recognizable, her audience changes too.
Seeing her popularity and the possibility of being weird, social media scammers are trying to turn Hawk Tuah Girl into a right-wing martyr. And the groans and sideways glances have already begun, with new haters declaring that Hawk Tuah Girl isn’t so funny anymore now that they actually know what Hawk Tuah is.
The greater her celebrity, the less Hawk Tuah Girl belongs exclusively to the straight Internet bubble. This heroine’s rise, triumph and apparent denouement happened in about a week. Next week we might not talk about her at all, and maybe we’ll have found a new main character with a new role. But for now, when she asks, “Do you understand me?” ”, well, a lot of people really, really do.