What happened to “Hawk Tuah Girl?”
Highs and lows of one of the many Internet phenomena
January 14th, 2025
The history of the web is filled with characters turned into memes, known by millions of users worldwide but often without significant economic or personal benefits. In recent years, however, the growing monetization opportunities offered by social networks have expanded the possibilities of leveraging online fame. Yet, it is still rare for the subject of a meme to maintain the attention of users for extended periods of time. One exception is Haliey Welch, known as the "Hawk Tuah Girl." The 22-year-old became famous thanks to a single video published last June by the American YouTuber duo Tim & Dee, who specialise in “man on the street” content – stopping people on the street for spontaneous questions. Welch's video was viewed, commented on, and shared hundreds of thousands of times on social media, reaching millions of users worldwide. Within days, numerous “Hawk Tuah”-themed products, including mugs, t-shirts, and hats, were sold online. Before becoming one of the many memes, Welch lived in a small American town with fewer than a thousand residents and worked in a local factory. Many thought her popularity would last no more than a couple of weeks, but surprisingly, it turned out differently.
Today, Welch is a medium-scale web celebrity: she has amassed millions of followers on social media, launched a podcast with over 200,000 followers, appeared on television shows, and created her own line of hats, selling thousands of them. She also founded an animal welfare association. Welch has deliberately chosen to stay away from politics, avoiding becoming the right-wing influencer many expected her to be. This wasn’t a given, considering she comes from Tennessee, a traditionally Republican state, and that her video resonated particularly with conservative American men. Welch managed to maintain a reasonable level of attention until, like many other online-born celebrities, she was recently embroiled in a potential scandal.
The Case Involving the Hawk Tuah Girl
$Li coin and $HAWK pic.twitter.com/97EStVHEpt
— alex (@genossse) January 2, 2025
As explained by the U.S. edition of Vanity Fair, Welch's image was jeopardized by a case involving "$HAWK", a cryptocurrency inspired by “Hawk Tuah.” These so-called “meme coins” are cryptocurrencies born from pop culture phenomena. They are investments many people make almost as a joke, often without any know-how, leading to significant value fluctuations. $HAWK was developed by the Tuah The Moon foundation, which paid Welch over $120,000 to promote the cryptocurrency on her social channels. Once available for investment, $HAWK's market value soared to $500 million before plummeting rapidly to less than $30 million, a drop of over 90% in just a few hours.
Welch was accused of scamming investors using the so-called “pump-and-dump” scheme, where a small group of individuals buys large amounts of a specific cryptocurrency to inflate its value and raise expectations, only to sell off en masse, causing a sharp devaluation. After the $HAWK incident, Welch disappeared from her social channels without explanation: she stopped posting and ceased her podcast. Meanwhile, on TikTok, the Hawk Tuah Girl has once again become a meme, this time mocking people who come up with outrageous excuses to avoid difficult situations. After two weeks of silence, Welch announced that she planned to sue the Tuah The Moon foundation and the platform where the cryptocurrency was sold. Her accusation claims that the parties involved exploited Welch's fame and audience to attract inexperienced cryptocurrency followers, who, trusting Welch, were inadvertently drawn into operations that effectively amounted to financial speculation.