Amala Ekpunobi

Hawk Tuah Girl & The Viral Moment to Influencer Pipeline

This Hawk Tuah girl thing has gone on for wayyyyy tooooo long. Now she’s hopping on podcasts, doing guest appearances at concerts, and quitting her job to move to LA and launch a career??? Can we stop making people famous for these types of moments?

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Duration:: 12m
Broadcast on:: 05 Jul 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

This episode is brought to you by Snapple, want to know another Snapple fact? The first hot air balloon passengers were a sheep, a duck, and a rooster. Ridiculous! Check out Snapple.com to find ridiculously flavored Snapple near you. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Forget the frustration of picking commerce platforms when you switch your business to Shopify. The global commerce platform that supercharges your selling, wherever you sell. With Shopify, you'll harness the same intuitive features, trusted apps, and powerful analytics used by the world's leading brands. Sign up today for your $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com/tech. I'll lowercase. That's Shopify.com/tech. Alright, so we had the crazy plane lady, then we had the N-word girl, and I guess we are just collectively assembling a team of Avengers, and these Avengers are young women who go viral for doing or saying crazy things and have their 15 minutes of fame. And with that, we have HUCK TO A GIRL. Yep, I'm being so serious right now. Let's talk about it. Guys, before we get into today's video, please like and subscribe. I've been hearing a lot of discourse about this HUCK TO A GIRL and her video is circulating all over the internet, and I can't be alone. I cannot be the only one who thinks I am over. Whatever trend this is that allows young women like this to go viral for doing or saying crazy things. Now, for those of you who don't know what the HUCK TO A GIRL is, here's the video that originally made her go viral. She was being street interviewed on a night out with a friend and was asked about, I guess, pleasing a man? And here was her answer. What's one move in bed that makes a man go crazy every time. Ah, you gotta give him that HUCK TO A GIRL. It's been all that night. Yep, that's the clip. That's what made her go viral. This is why this young girl is now famous for answering that question in the way that she did. And I gotta be honest with you guys, I don't get it. When I saw this viral clip for the first time, it was crickets. I don't find anything funny about that. In fact, I think the only people who maybe would find that funny are like 13-year-old boys or men who have somehow grown into their adulthood while maintaining the humor of a 13-year-old boy. And I guess that is the case because people have been covering this on their podcast. Andrew Scholes covered it on "Flaygrants" Joe Rogan, covered it on the Joe Rogan experience. And as you can imagine, there is nothing of substance to be said about this girl or about what she said in the clip. Yet, the clip has still maintained millions, maybe even billions of views on the internet. And of course, with that comes fame. Every man and his brother and father were trying to find out who Hock To a Girl is to give this girl applause for what she said in the street interview. And found her they did. Her name is Haley Welch. She's 21 years old and she works at a spring factory. And this Hock To a Clip made her so famous that she actually decided to quit her job. What? We'll talk about that in just a moment. And whether or not that's a good idea. Now everybody's making Hock To a Jokes. It's sort of a colloquialism. There's a Hock To a meme. And she even got invited to a Zach Bryan concert to say Hock To a On Stage. She also got this picture with Shaquille O'Neal. And you can imagine the internet is making many a joke about that. And you know, before I get to the part of me that is totally over this, I will acknowledge that it's kind of interesting and funny that humans are this way, that we can make somebody famous for such a small, crass statement that they make in a random street interview when they're out with a friend. And I understand that there's some sort of novelty to it, that everybody's seeing this Hock To a Girl. So it's so fun when she shows up at a concert, or they're talking about her on her favorite podcast, or she's making the rounds and people are finding out more about her life. I get it. But should we continue down the path of making people famous for this stuff? And when we do, how long does that fame actually last? To me, it's very reminiscent of, I don't know, the crazy plain lady who had that mental breakdown on a plane where she said "That motherf***er back there is not real!" After that clip went viral, she started making the rounds on podcast, being super active on social media, even got a sponsorship from ultra-right beer, which is just so weird to me, but I guess they got the bang for their buck on that one. Or maybe she's like the N-word girl, Loni Gaddis, who said this in a now viral TikTok. Married to broke us. She started taking off and becoming famous, or should I say infamous for saying these sort of ridiculously controversial things in TikToks. That didn't last very long, but she also was sponsored by ultra-right beer. Well, ultra-right beer? What the f*** are you doing? If I see ultra-right beer launch sponsorship with Haley Welch, the Hock Toa girl, I might have to quit this. I might be done. Well, I'm out, man. But I guess people are coming to her for her political takes from a Hock Toa perspective. No, I'm not kidding. They asked her whether or not she would perform a Hock Toa on Donald Trump, and this was her answer. Donald Trump. No, absolutely not. No. Uh-uh. It's a no for me. Now, we would hope that this would be the answer from a 21-year-old girl when asked whether or not she would perform an act like this on Donald Trump. But people are actually using this clip to make a political statement on her behalf, saying that she doesn't want to endorse Donald Trump for president because she doesn't want to give him Hock Toa. No, guys, I'm not making this up. People are actually debating back and forth on the internet over this girl and what she said in that clip. And I guess Hailey thinks that this five-second moment that went viral on TikTok and X and Instagram is going to give her a long-lasting career because this is what she said in a recent podcast interview about what she's going to do with her Hock Toa fame. I've been dropped out of school for, like, a year or two. Okay, so this was like-- But I don't quit my job. I said, "Peace." So now is like, you're going to go to L.A., you're going to go to New York. Oh, yeah. Do you think you see yourself, like, starting your own type of, like, show or podcast or are you just going to be, like, an internet personality? I think we're going to do, like, a show and then we're just going to be, like, on a bunch of podcasts and everything else in between. Cool. So kind of just figuring out how you got it. Oh, yeah. There's more to come. Don't worry. There's more to come. It's so crazy. It happened. The internet is insane. Your life changed overnight. It really did. Yeah. For sure. Are people coming out of the woodworks now? Like, what are your friends back home like? Are they treating you differently? Are they, like, being bitches about it? Or are they not-- They're really supportive. Oh, good. I've had maybe one or two that have had some nasty comments about it because the comments I've got from it, I don't even know these people, but I know they're, like, from my area. But all the mamas and all my friends and everything else that know me personally, they've attacked that ass. Let me just tell you. It's just been-- I couldn't-- I can't even tell you. So everyone's loving it. Oh, yeah. No, guys. I'm sure Haley is a perfectly sweet, funny, charismatic girl, but supportive of what? Moving to L.A. or New York for what? Starting a show for what? I don't know what's going on here. I get that her life changed overnight. This video went viral. People found her. I bet her inbox is full. Many people are following her. But I want to ask, how long she thinks that change is going to last? How much can you exactly capitalize on when it comes to this moment? Sure, maybe there are sponsorships and some podcast appearances and going to the Zach Ryan concert or taking a photo with the Shack. But there is a flash in the pan that exists with these moments. And I think that needs to be recognized. There's a reason we don't have a show from Lily Gaddis, The N-Word Girl, or Tiffany Gomez, The Plain Lady Podcast. And it's because these moments go viral because they're crazy. They catch people off guard. Maybe they're a little bit funny. But it's not because they're looking to that person for a future career in entertainment. Sometimes we need to just let things be what they are. A moment. A video that you saw on TikTok that gave you a little bit of a laugh and you continued scrolling. I don't know that Hock To a Girl needs to be quitting her career at the Spring Factory and moving to LA or New York to launch some sort of Hock To a Project. I have a sneaking suspicion that she would be contributing more to society working in the Spring Factory than she would be doing whatever it is she's going to take on in the back of this Hock To a joke. And I can't blame her for going on this path because I think most people would if given the opportunity to capitalize on a moment like this, I'm just questioning us as a society. And as a society right now, especially when looking at young people, it seems like a lot of individuals have this drive towards creating these flash-in-the-pan moments of fame and capitalizing off of them. Let's read some stats. 45% of Gen Z creator surveyed said that they are spired to own a business and make money from content shared online. 57% of Gen Zers say they'd be an influencer if given the opportunity. One in four people between the ages of 16 and 25 want to become influencers. I'm over having a little fun and making something big out of something small. It's what we humans come together to do to create a little fun moment and for some reason it sticks with us. A little while back, I saw a guy gather hundreds of people in some park in New York City to watch him eat a bucket of cheese balls. You'll be immortalized as cheese ball man. And while a part of me thinks it's ridiculous, another part of me goes, "Look at what a crazy, unique human experience that is. AI couldn't possibly recreate what I just saw with my own two eyes." And maybe that's what makes people like the Hawk to a Girl or the Plain Lady go viral. There's some sort of unfathomable yet human aspect of what we're watching and it makes us want to see more. Maybe I'm intellectualizing it too much. I just can't help but think the more we give attention to these moments or have people create pseudo-careers out of these moments, the more we're going to have people doing whatever it is they can to go viral. Whether it's eating themselves to death or creating fake skits or race hoaxes or having cheese balls eaten in the middle of a New York City park. We're entering an era of social media psychosis and the era is characterized by Hawk to a Girls and Plain Freakouts and White Girls saying the N word and people doing just whatever they can think of in order to gain attention and eyeballs. And these people who go viral are forever going to be known for the thing they went viral for. I know Haley Welch is 21 and she's living it up and she's having a fun time being what she is now, but does she forever want to be known as the Hawk to a Girl? Maybe she can leverage this joke and use it for a career or pivot in another direction without people really caring about her past on social media. But still, it's something that is always going to pop up when you search this girl's name. She's always going to be associated with a sexual act because of a joke she made in a street interview. When you're 21 that's cool, I guess, when you're 45 and you have kids, how cool is that? All is to say, I'm personally over the Hawk to a Girl, I didn't find it funny to begin with and I do not find it funny now. And I'm sort of over all the other viral moments and instances like it and I'm wondering if I'm alone on this boat. There's got to be more people like me out there who when they see these videos knows what's going to happen. There's going to be a 15 minutes of fame cycle that follows. It falls into obscurity and then somebody else pops up to take the throne as the new Internet meme of the month. We can do better, guys. But those are just my thoughts. Drop your thoughts in the comments down below. As always, if you disagree with anything said in this video, do get out in the comments down below but do so respectfully. And if you like this video, like, subscribe, click the notification bell to be notified every single time I post a video for you guys, which is every day. And I will see you next time. Bye, guys! [outro music]