Hawk Tuah Girl

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Featured Episode

About

The Hawk Tuah Girl, also known as the Spit On That Thing Girl or Spit On That Thang Girl, refers to a woman who was interviewed in a viral TikTok video and was asked, "What's one move in bed that makes a man go crazy every time?" to which she responded in a Southern accent, "Oh, you gotta give him that hawk tuah and spit on that thang," resembling a spitting sound amid oral sex. Instagram user and YouTubers Tim & Dee TV posted the original video filmed in Nashville, Tennessee. The blonde girl seen with her friend was dubbed the "Hawk Tuah Girl" (sometimes written "hock tuh" or "putuh"), leading to memes, fancam edits and humorous romanticization from male internet users who found themselves attracted to her. A green-screen CapCut template also surfaced as an exploitable meme with the Hawk Tuah Girl used by meme creators who added her overtop backgrounds, inserting her into different scenarios. The phrase also inspired variants like, "If She Don't Hawk Tuah, Then I Don't Wanna Talk Tuha." The identity and name of the Hawk Tuah Girl is Haliey Welch (often misspelled Hailey Welch) and her friend's name is Chelsea Bradford. Post-virality, a rumor spread that the Hawk Tuah Girl got fired from a preschool teacher job, but this was later proven false.

Origin

On June 11th, 2024, YouTubers Tim & Dee TV posted a Reel to their Instagram^[1] account @timanddeetv of a street interview conducted in Nashville, Tennessee with two women. He asked the blonde girl, "What's one move in bed that makes a man go crazy every time?" to which she responded in a Southern accent, "Oh, you gotta give him that hawk tuah and spit on that thang," referencing a spitting sound associated with oral sex. Over six days, the video received roughly 8.9 million plays and 238,900 likes (shown below).

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A post shared by Tim & Dee TV (@timanddeetv)

What's one move in bed that makes a man go crazy every time?
Oh, you gotta give him that hawk tuah and spit on that thang! You get me?

The interview clip was also posted to the @DMarloww TikTok^[13] account on June 11th, receiving over 540,000 views, 49,000 likes, 14,000 saves and 600 comments in six days (shown below).

Precursor

The first known meme to use a spitting onomatopoeia with "hawk" was a since-deleted tweet shared by Twitter / X^[8] user @kuntanokhinte on February 20th, 2021, that showed a DM screenshot of his friend saying, "hawk putuh" (shown below, left). On February 22nd, a screenshot of the tweet was posted to the subreddit /r/BlackPeopleTwitter,^[9] gaining over 4,700 upvotes in three years.

On March 10th, 2023, Facebook^[10] user Ankh Ma'at Ra shared a post reading, "Lil bro arguing with his girl, She texted him 'Hawk Patuh' he looked at me and said Did this MF just spit on me. I'm still crying," gaining over 10,000 reactions in a year (shown below, right).

On March 21st, 2024, TikToker^[11] @chinchillas.66 posted a video that copied the aforementioned Facebook post's joke, however, she instead wrote, "HAWK TUHH," gaining over 11.6 million plays and 785,200 likes in three months.

Spread

On June 12th, 2024, TikToker^[2] Dustin Laney (@iamdlaney) reposted the video receiving over 2.4 million plays and 225,900 likes in five days. The repost led to a slew of TikTok memes with the Hawk Tuah Girl in mid-June 2024, like on June 14th when TikToker^[3] @taters66 used the Hawk Tuah Girl to represent cleaning his motorcycle, gaining over 1.3 million plays and 28,900 likes in three days (shown below, left).

On June 15th, TikToker^[4] @drinkingtiktoks posted a video that used a green-screen template of the Hawk Tuah Girl, object labeling a caption that labeled her "My new girlfriend" when being introduced to a boyfriend's mother, receiving over 4.6 million plays and 260,300 likes in two days (shown below, right).

Viral iterations using the green-screen template persisted in late June 2024, like a video posted by TikToker^[5] @armandovasquez76 on June 16th, who captioned it, "When people ask my wife, 'how do you get him to buy you so much jewelry?'" gaining over 852,000 plays and 34,300 likes in a day (shown below).

A viral TikTok sound^[7] for the green-screen template was created by a TikToker named Joe Powalisz (@farmerjoes) whose original video was deleted. Regardless, the viral TikTok sound^[7] amassed over 11,200 posts by June 17th, 2024.

On June 20th, 2024, X^[15] user @Rothmus tweeted a meme showing Ryan Gosling looking up at the Hawk Tuah Girl in the You Look Lonely meme template from Blade Runner, gaining over 36,000 likes in a day (shown below).

Hawk Tuah Girl Name / Identity

On June 16th, 2024, @timanddeetv posted a comment on the original Instagram^[1] video (shown below, left) in which they said that the two girls were named Chelsea Bradford and Haliey Welch, the latter being the Hawk Tuah Girl. @timanddeetv shared their usernames but the one listed for Welch (@halieywelch) produced no conclusive result on Instagram.^[6]

However, photos of the two together are present on Bradford's VSCO^[12] account (example shown below, right).

On June 19th, 2024, Tennessee-based apparel company Fathead Threads posted two photos to Facebook^[14] showing the owner, Jason Poteete, standing with the Hawk Tuah Girl (shown below). She's seen with the same left arm tattoos from the original video, wearing a hat reading, "Hawk Tuah '24 Spit On That Thang." The post was promoting her line of merch with the store. She's seen in the second photo signing her name "Haliey" on the hats. The post received over 7,000 reactions in two days.

If She Don't Hawk Tuah, Then I Don't Wanna Talk Tuha

Sometime before June 20th, 2024, TikToker^[16] @tjtatteddd8.1 posted a video of himself saying, "All I say is, if she don't hawk tuah, then I don't wanna talk tuha," with corresponding text overlay. In three days, the video received over 5 million plays before being deleted by TikTok. The video's TikTok sound^[17] still amassed usage though, and @tjtatteddd8.1 reposted the TikTok^[18] on June 24th (shown below).

Going into late June 2024, users copied the joke across social media. For instance, on June 21st, 2024, X^[19] user @bongsandbuicks tweeted, "if she dont hawk tuah, I dont talk tuah!" gaining over 3.4 million views and 44,000 likes in three days (shown below).

Fired From Preschool Teacher Job Rumor

In late June 2024, a rumor spread that the Hawk Tuah Girl was fired from a preschool teacher job. It started on June 21st, 2024, when the satirical Facebook^[20] page Tippah County Tribune shared a post purporting that she'd been fired from a preschool teaching job in Tippah County, Mississippi. The post gained over 3,900 reactions and 30,000 shares in three days (shown below).

The rumor was then spread via viral posts on TikTok^[21] and X^[22] in the following days, each racking up millions of views before it was later confirmed to be a hoax.

Signing To UTA Hoax

On June 26th, 2024, Page Six reported that Haliey Welch was signed to talent agency UTA. The following day, UTA denied the report, calling it "made up" and "untrue."

Tim & Dee TV Full Interview

On June 23rd, 2024, the official Tim & Dee TV YouTube channel uploaded the full episode and interview with Hawk Tuah Girl, accumulating nearly 1 million views, 10,000 likes and 1,300 comments in three days (shown below).

Talk Tuah Podcast

On September 3rd, 2024, a trailer for the Talk Tuah podcast was posted to Haliey Welch's X^[23] page and the official Talk Tuah YouTube^[24] channel, garnering over 18,000 likes on the former and 13,700 views on the latter in a day. The X post claims that the podcast is produced by Betr, a sportsbook site co-founded by Jake Paul.

The trailer begins by showing a selection of hate comments telling Welch that her meme is dead as the camera zooms in on Welch, who is looking over a lake. She then turns and says, "Y'all really thought I was done? I'm just getting started, baby." The trailer then shows a compilation of clips from the podcast's pre-recorded episodes, featuring interviews with celebrities including Jake Paul, Logan Paul, Whitney Cummings and Sketch. The show premiered on September 10th.

Pookie Reveal

Pookie refers to memes and discourse about Hawk Tuah girl Haliey Welch's boyfriend, who was kept private and only referred to as "pookie" until November 12th, 2024, when he was revealed on the Talk Tuah podcast. Leading up to the reveal, Welch teased Pookie's existence numerous times, referring to their relationship as on-and-off. The repeated mentions of Pookie inspired discourse and memes about who Pookie might be. During the reveal podcast, it was revealed that Pookie is Welch's friend and co-host Chelsea's cousin.

Various Examples

Template

Vote For Hawk Tuah

Write-In Vote Hawk Tuah Girl for President refers to a series of memes about writing in Haliey Welch, the Hawk Tuah Girl, for president in the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election. Memes about voting for Welch were popularized on social media as early as September 2024, becoming increasingly prevalent as the election date of November 5th neared.