The “Hawk Tua Girl” has been called “the most famous person on the planet right now.” Joe Rogan’s podcast. It may be debatable, but he must be the most famous person in recent memory who gained notoriety due to onomatopoeia.
The Hawk Tuah Girl (which isn’t even her real name, but a particularly accurate description of her life stage) went viral last week, thanks to a video featuring her provocative description of oral sex. But he’s primarily known by one demographic: straight men. In a completely informal and completely incomplete survey of Vox employees, her existence reached a cross-section of heterosexual men, while others around the office had absolutely no idea what the speech was about. And boy, does that make things weird.
Because I’m a Hawk Tuh Girl newbie myself, I asked her main audience to help explain the phenomenon. Because his rise to fame involved both innuendo and sound effects, Vox gave these straight men anonymity so they could speak candidly and freely.
And it turns out that whether or not you know who you are as a Hawk Tuah Girl, about yourself, your algorithm and how much you can tell online, what Internet reputation really means and to whom.
Who is Hawk Tuah Girl and how did she become famous?
Before being known as Hawk Tuah Girl, Hawk Tuah Girl was known as Hayley Welch. But Welch’s fortunes changed forever when he appeared in a Girl-outside-a-bar video From producer Tim & Dee TV. These are type of video — usually involving beautiful women who may or may not have had a little to drink — is a subset of the larger “Tiktoker talks 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 gotta give that ‘hawk tua’ and spit on that thang,” Welch says with a laugh. “You caught me?”
At this point Welch’s perfect onomatopoeia took over whoever it was. Her inner life, her desires, her fears, her being – it all fades away because she’s created such rich and accurate sound effects for a certain type of fellatio.
Hayley Welch is no more. Hawk Tuah Girl is born, and people love Hawk Tuah Girl.
He was hailed as a the hero, revolutionaryAnd It’s the girl of the moment. The falcon was tuah memed And to imitateAnd there were people Seeing Hawk Tuahs everywhere Now that Hawk Tua girl has opened her eyes to the Baz Tuas around them. Also had, as cut noteSome erroneous reports that he was fired from the job but Internet users was quick to point out misinformation and defend his young legacy. Hawk Tuah Girl’s lore grew and grew.
Chad, a straight man who works in crypto-related finance, told me he first encountered the video last Wednesday or Thursday. Friends were sending him videos throughout the day. When asked who these friends were, he replied: “White, straight men mostly.”
“How many women have sent you videos?” I asked him.
“Nothing,” Chad said.
Despite getting the video and the link multiple times, Chad refrains from clicking. Tried to take it out. He does not want to participate in another meme. Around the same time, Chad notices that someone is a “Lucky Hawk“To take advantage of the altcoin currency moment. Within hours, he said, the volatile coin was worth “tens of millions” of dollars. If the Finance Brothers shitpost coin, it’s usually a sign from Chad that perhaps the meme at hand doesn’t warrant further examination. Perhaps Thumbnails and stills will be enough to understand.
Still, Chad eventually gave up.
“To be honest, it was kind of visceral and gross,” Chad told Vox, explaining his first reaction to the video. His disgust wasn’t with specific sexual acts, but the startlingly crisp audio of literal spitting arguably veers into loogie territory. “He’s very well mic’d,” he told me.
The video also made its way onto George’s feed via Instagram Reels last week. George, a 30-year-old straight man, did not react as adversely to the word as Chad did. He thought it was amusing, if not charming.
“Despite finding it quite likable and quite funny, I thought she was fairly enlightened and she would probably regret it,” George told Vox. “I thought it would probably be at least a small viral moment, but I had no idea it would take off so quickly.”
I asked both George and Chad what they thought was the reason this video caught fire so quickly. Straight men tend to be fans of both funny sounds and oral sex. Things traditionally attractive women can say have long been a pop culture fascination.
Both noted that it was the sincerity that really stuck. Social media is curated in such a way that this stream of TikTokers and content creators also tend to talk to women on a night out. “Haq Tuah” was a moment that didn’t feel like it.
“It was an innocent moment of total honesty, maybe,” Chad said. “He found himself unprepared for two seconds, or so it seemed.”
Cameron, a self-described “very-online” straight man, put it more simply – asked me to consider Occam’s Razor.
“You’re asking me Attractive young woman talks about why oral sex, and how it’s her favorite thing, and the answer to every problem Go viral?” she said. “Straight men are just what you think they are… I don’t want to be like that. Yes, people, we are very stupid. But as such, we are one of a kind.”
Will Hawk Tuah girl forever be Hawk Tuah girl?
An interesting aspect of the Hok Tuah Girl’s rise to fame is that there were still people who had not yet heard of her. Incidentally, there was a divide in my personal and professional life, until Monday morning, straight guys knew all about her, and non-straight guys needed further explanation.
Perhaps it’s because the Internet has seemingly made the world smaller, that there are still pockets and mini Internet worlds that — by cookies, algorithms, interests — we’re not privy to.
Cameron, the very online guy who is probably online this very second, mentions another internet heroine Oilers Girl. Oilers Girl (not her real name) flashed the crowd during the NHL playoffs and went viral on what she calls the “barstool internet” but didn’t breach the mainstream public. (for “barstool”. Barstool SportsThe long-running digital media company, founded by Dave Portnoy, is known for Passionate fanbase And Deliberately cross culture.)
“Oilers girl and Hawk Tuah girl — they’re the Chaple Ron and Charli XCX of the straight guy internet right now,” Cameron told me, trying to speak a language we both knew. Cameron Chappell didn’t know how to pronounce Rhone, but it clicked for me, and I no longer felt like I was talking to an alien.
It’s the idea that things on the internet and social media can feel so inevitable and inevitable to you and not even register as a blip to other viewers. As small as the internet seems and as seemingly connected as we are, it’s hard to know how big things really are these days. Be it Hawk Tuah Girl, Oilers Girl or “Let’s work on its remix” Just kidding, it’s hard to understand the relative size of a meme because of how fragmented our various internets are. It seems like algorithms and “for you” pages have gotten so good at catering to certain people that the result is a lack of visibility.
What this means for the actual woman behind the meme remains to be seen.
Perhaps Hawk Tuah Girl will rise higher, become more famous. According to the New York Post, he has already sold some Hawk Tuah Girl is worth $65,000 merchandise, and rumor has it that he Signature With the Hollywood Agency. Unlike many of the internet’s main characters, Hawk Tuah Girl seems primed to monetize her attention.
But as he became more known, his audience changed.
Seeing her popularity and opportunity to be weird, social media clout grifters are trying to turn Hawk Tuah Girl Right wing martyr. And Moans and side eyes Already starting, new haters are declaring that Hawk Tuah Girl isn’t as funny now that they actually know what Hawk Tuah is.
As big as her celebrity is, the low-key tuah girl belongs exclusively in the straight-guy internet bubble. The rise, triumph and seeming condemnation of this hero happened in about a week. Next week we won’t talk about him at all and maybe we’ll find a new main character with a new bit. But for now, when she asks, “You got me?”, well, a lot of people really, really do.
