It’s only been about a month and a half since the original “Hawk Tuah Girl” clip exploded online, making young Nashville resident Haliey Welch an overnight celebrity.
By now, the clip of Welch has been viewed tens if not hundreds of millions of times across TikTok, YouTube, and every other internet platform that supports streaming video in literally any capacity.
For a while there, in an earlier phase of viral internet culture, newcomers like Welch arrived all the time, if not on a daily basis. Every time you loaded up your news aggregator or social media platform of choice, there’d be some new random, everyday person (or even sometimes an animal) who’d been catapulted to global fame by some brief snippet of video that caught everyone’s attention. You can probably recall at least a few of these personalities by name, from “Friday” singer Rebecca Black to Damn Daniel to Chris Crocker, whose memorable plea “Leave Britney Alone!” made him a cultural touchpoint for a brief period in 2007.
In that bygone era, viral celebrities had a sort of mini career path carved out. Their video would explode on to the scene, they’d become the subject of parodies and remixes which would help spread the word about them, they’d sell a bunch of merch, maybe try to trademark their catchphrase, get in a few TV appearances (almost definitely including a stop by “Ellen”) and generally cash in as much as possible on their fame before the world moved on.
In 2024, there’s no more semblance of an internet “monoculture” or a clearly defined path for a viral celebrity. The slow collapse of viral aggregators like Digg, Fark, and Reddit has robbed us of a central clearing house for fresh memes. While massive platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube have splintered the “internet audience” into tens of thousands of micro-communities with their own particular culture and interests.
Today, a brief clip that gains true mainstream traction – even something as simple and straight-forward as “Hawk Tuah” – is then immediately filtered through all of these discrete, niche communities, and ends up meaning something different to everyone. There are as many takes on “Hawk Tuah Girl” and responses to her fame as there are destinations on the World Wide Web.
Where it gets interesting is when you start looking at how these different voices, channels, websites, and commentators interpret and play around with Welch and “Hawk Tuah.” How its meaning and infamy shifts depending on who’s watching and reacting to the clip and their own particular background and biases.
One of the first news stories to emerge after the clip went viral was a “fake news” post from a satirical social media account, Tippah County Tribune. They claimed Welch (whom they identified under a fake name) had been a preschool teacher, who lost her job at “Epstein Day School” in the aftermath of the video being released.
This story has a bit of everything, and it’s so revealing about the inherent biases of Tippah County’s Boomer-leaning Facebook audience. Many commentators don’t recognize the story as satirical, and accept it at face value. The Epstein joke (a reference to late financier and human trafficker Jeffrey Epstein) also reflects American paranoia over pedophilia and child trafficking more generally. Plus, it’s a touch misogynist and sex-negative, suggesting that a free-spirited young woman must have suffered real-world consequences just for making a silly joke on camera. In truth, she had not. The real Welch worked at a spring factory in Tennessee. She quit her job after the “Hawk Tuah” clip went super-viral and led to further career opportunities.
Then there was an interview earlier this month with Brianna Lapaglia of Barstool Sports. Lapaglia asked Welch if she’d do the “hawk tuah” move on former President Donald Trump, to which Welch responded in the resounding negative.
Though her politics were not part of the original question, this was nonetheless taken as a declaration of Welch’s wider stance on Election 2024. Trump supporters bashed her on social media. While Biden supporters (this was before he dropped out of the race) celebrated her solidarity. But “who are you going to vote for” wasn’t the original question! Welch has yet to actually declare her candidate of choice. Which is probably a smart career move.
In an attempt to further that career, and expand her internet presence beyond just a single, sexually explicit two-word phrase, Welch has been making the comedy podcast rounds. On Whitney Cummings’ show, “Good for You,” she flirted with comic Matt Rife and seemingly set up a date for when he passes through Nashville next month.
Welch also sat down with 68-year-old comedian Bill Maher on his YouTube and podcast series, “Club Random.” Maher’s personal interpretation of the “Hawk Tuah” cultural moment, and the woman behind it, couldn’t be more clear. He sees her as an exemplar of a lost, “warped” generation that needs personal guidance from him, comedian and HBO regular Bill Maher.
Maher’s advice itself is confusing. He tells Welch that she needs to define herself and her persona beyond just her original moment of viral fame. But then pitches her on a sex advice podcast. Which is… exactly what she was doing during her initial moment of viral fame. Welch responds by mostly giggling at Maher’s weird suggestions while pointing out that he’s old enough to be her “Grandpappy.”
But just from his questions and tone, you can tell that he’s bitter about “Hawk Tuah.” Comedy is a business. His profession. And here’s this outsider coming in and making a bigger splash than his series has in a decade or more and sucking up all the oxygen in the room. Of course, he wants to talk down to her and lecture her and tell her about how he’s actually much wiser and more important in the grand scheme of things.
Elon Musk has also interacted with Welch on his platform, X, to provide helpful yet self-serving guidance and advice. According to UK tabloid The Mirror, after Welch joined the platform and started posting, Musk started sending her encouraging personal messages, telling her that X is the “free speech platform” and nothing she posts will be “taken down” unless it’s illegal. He also apparently warned her about “trolls” and “NPC attacks,” which are “part of the experience” in his view. Welch reacted better to the guidance from Musk than Maher, calling him her “hero” and sharing his thoughts with her fans on Instagram.
While these “internet dads” may have had paternalistic, protective feelings for Welch, hoping to caution her and protect her from the vicious world of online mobs, Rolling Stone and author Joseph Hudak were apparently eager to draft off of her sudden relevance and youthful appeal. In an oft-mocked profile published on July 11, Hudak calls Welch “the national hero we need” and writes that she “exudes the charm and magnetism of a Gen Z Dolly Parton.” The piece was so effusive and over-the-top, it inspired a 180-degree editorial from Luke Winkie of Slate, making the case that there’s no need for Welch to become more famous at all, and the phenomenon should’ve rightly stopped with that original video.
To me, this feels a bit like William F. Buckey’s famous definition of conservatism: “A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop.” No editorial can put this genie back into the bottle. Haliey Welch worked in a spring factory, and now she has CAA representation. Why wouldn’t she pursue every possible avenue that’s open to her?
From a creator POV, there are more and more diverse kinds of opportunities now than at any other moment in internet history. There’s no more Viral Video-to-Ellen pipeline but actual opportunities to turn a widely-seem TikTok clip into a sustainable career in entertainment. But there are also more challenges than ever. Once someone goes viral and becomes widely visible, the media, other creators, and the public at large are constantly defining and redefining them, whether they consent to it or not. Haliey Welch probably wouldn’t compare herself personally to Dolly Parton (it seems like she’s a fan) but that didn’t stop Rolling Stone. And now that comparison is just out there in the world.
As well, ownership over the actual videos themselves has proved an ongoing concern. YouTube duo Tim and Dee TV (aka Tim Dickerson and DeArius Marlow) actually produced the “man on the street” video that made Welch an international sensation. They get to keep the ad revenue from the original YouTube clip, and they even uploaded the TikTok version that sparked the trend. But otherwise, they’ve been excised from the viral phenomenon. In a sad but telling reflection on how these things tend to work out, the duo told the New York Times that they heard from a number of huge internet sites and publications, from Complex to Barstool to OnlyFans, but only with queries about how to reach the Hawk Tuah Girl herself.
For creators, this is the most relevant takeaway of all. You can own the original copyrighted material that you produce. But you can’t control how anyone sees it, what they make of it, or how they want to reinterpret or remix what you’ve created. Once it leaves your computer and hits the internet, in a very real and meaningful way, it belongs to everyone.
