Featured Image Credit: YouTube/Tim and Dee TV
Topics: Celebrity, Hawk Tuah girl, Viral, Social Media, Cryptocurrency
Joe Harker
Topics: Celebrity, Hawk Tuah girl, Viral, Social Media, Cryptocurrency
It's been one year since American woman Haliey Welch shot to viral fame and became known as 'Hawk Tuah Girl'.
In case you've been out of the loop on this one, YouTuber duo Tim and Dee TV were out on the streets of Nashville, Tennessee, asking passersby that all-important question: "What’s one move in bed that makes a man go crazy every time?"
One of the people they asked was Welch, who was out on the town with her friend Chelsea Bradford, and when the question was put to her she uttered the words which would propel her to viral fame.
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"You gotta give ’em that ‘hawk tuah’ and spit on that thang!" she declared, miming the act of spitting onto a gentleman's nether regions in order to lubricate it.
Suddenly she was known as 'Hawk Tuah' girl and the internet was propelling her to fame, and one year on from that the Metro caught up with her to ask how things were going in Welch's world.
In the immediate aftermath of the video gaining viral fame, she was advised to get herself an agent if she wanted to make the most of what turned out to be considerably more than 15 minutes of fame.
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She certainly wasn't the only one, as thousands of pieces of 'Hawk Tuah' merchandise got sold by brands jumping on the trend.
She said she became 'overwhelmed' by the attention she got from the viral video, and had to debunk claims she'd been fired from her job.
Welch told Metro she became a 'nervous wreck' after realising how much of a juggernaut this had become and had the unenviable task of explaining what 'hawk tuah' meant to her grandmother.
Fortunately, her granny 'giggled' and decided to show her support for Welch by wearing a hat with the viral words on it.
Legend.
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Entering the world of celebrity, Welch was invited to throw the first pitch at a baseball game, party with country singer Zach Bryan and appeared on a whole host of podcasts.
This last change gave her an idea, as she launched her own podcast, Talk Tuah with Haliey Welch, which did remarkably well.
In addition to her successful podcast, Welch turned 'Hawk Tuah' into a brand that could convert her viral stardom into actual cash money.
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She entered into a partnership with Fathead Threads to sell an official line of 'Hawk Tuah 24' hats, and business owner Jason Poteete said at the time that Welch 'hasn’t gotten a dime from the first viral video that went out'.
While she didn't directly make money from the video, which is unsurprising considering the footage belonged to another channel, according to the Metro, her famous phrase has earned her about $500,000 (£369,000).
So far so good, but then things took a turn for the worse.
In December last year, a cryptocurrency meme coin called $HAWK was launched and Welch was the face of it.
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Launching on 4 December, the cryptocurrency quickly jumped in value to $490 million (£361 million) before dropping more than 90 percent in value in a matter of hours.
Those who'd sunk actual money into the cryptocurrency lost a huge amount of their investment, with angry investors claiming that Welch 'took my life savings' and the viral star facing accusations of a 'pump and dump' scheme.
Welch told Metro: "It was the most horrific experience I’ve ever been through. I had no earthly idea what it was.
"It was a gut-wrenching feeling, like you just feel sorry for everybody that supported you through it, and they lost their money putting it in because they trusted you to guide them with something good, and you didn’t. You failed."
While lawsuits were launched against $HAWK, Welch was only the face of the cryptocurrency and was not named as a defendant in the cases.
She went very quiet for several weeks, telling the Metro that her mental health suffered significantly and she 'tried to keep off social media', adding that she won't be having anything to do with cryptocurrency again.
When Welch returned in February with a new episode of Talk Tuah, she said: "I feel really bad for all the people that got affected by it.
"It just didn’t go the way I planned."
She said that $HAWK had been pitched to her as a 'long term coin' that would 'change the way everybody thinks about crypto', and Welch admitted she made a 'mistake' trusting a 'friend of a friend' and that she should probably have looked into him more.
Talk Tuah is still releasing episodes and Welch hopes to get Britney Spears on the podcast as a guest at some point. She also had a cameo in Chad Powers, an upcoming TV show on Hulu starring Glen Powell.
She also told Metro she was planning to stay around Tennessee, saying: "I like being out in the country, nobody around me except deer.
"I just love being out here - I could be out in the yard with my ducks or my dogs or my bunny. I have all sorts of creatures that can keep me entertained."
Even if she's already peaked in terms of fame, she's done rather well for herself out of one viral YouTube clip a year ago.