A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein - Hawk Tuah: From Harmless Meme to Right Wing Symbol

Episode Date: July 17, 2024

I stay away from heterosexual mess, but this time it came to me. Today, Taylor Lorenz and I work backwards to understand how a 21-year-old bed spring factory worker from Tennessee became a culture war symbol because of a drunken joke about fellatio. None of these words are in the bible. Support me + listen to bonus episodes on Patreon! Listen to Taylor’s podcast, Power User. Rocket Money is a real one for sponsoring the show. Start managing your money better and cancel unwanted expenses at www.rocketmoney.com/fruity. Me on Instagram. A Bit Fruity on Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This was the intro line that I workshoped. Tell me what you think. I don't usually involve myself in heterosexual mess. But when I do, there better be an anatomotopia for oral sex involved. Is that decent? That's funny. That's good. Hello, hello.

And welcome back to A BitFruity. I'm Matt Bernstein. And I'm so happy that you're here. How do you introduce someone who needs no introduction? Well, a few weeks ago, a tan, thin, blonde white girl went viral when she was interviewed in a person on the street style TikTok where she was asked by a male interviewer what she does to make a man go crazy in bed. She said,

Oh, you gotta give him that huck to and spit all that thing. She has since become completely inescapable in a way that has some people scratching their heads, others buying merchandise at beach boardwalks. across America that say Hawk Tua for President 2024, many men in her inbox asking when she's starting an only fans, paparazzi staked outside of her home that she shares with her grandma in Tennessee, Republicans declaring her a mascot for Trump's presidential campaign, and has left many still, very, very angry. Today, we are going to be talking about the woman, the myth, the legend that is the hawk-toa girl.

Hock-Tua, if it's not clear, being the Anamotapia for spitting on a dick during blowjob. Huck-to. We're going to be talking about her, but we're also going to crack open some internet history and cultural lore that set the stage for a human being

to go viral in this way. We're going to be talking about Alex from Target, Damn Daniel. Ain't nobody got time for that. And yes, Ellen DeGeneres. We're also going to talk about who gets to capitalize on their viral moments and who gets exploited and forgotten.

We're going to talk about the trope of being famous for being famous, the rights obsession with unsuspecting mascots, and yes, I do have a section of my outline called In Defense of Hawk Tua, so prepare for that as well. Before we get into the episode, if you would like to support this show or want more of the show, you can get that over on Patreon. This summer over on Patreon,

I am working on a multi-part series on Biddle sister, the late 2010's heterosexual trickery, vitamin gummy, YouTube beauty, James Charles Tati Westbrook scandal with our friend and influencer expert Kat Tenbarge, part two of that is out now, or we dissect the events of James Charles' vitamin gummy betrayal of his former best friend. And also, we get to the bottom of whether or not it's possible to trick a straight man into thinking that they're gay. The question remains unanswered. But for now, let's get into Hock Tour. Today, we are once again joined by the prolific Taylor Lorenz.

Taylor is a tech reporter at the Washington Post. She has, for years, been documenting social media and how we use it. She is the author of the new book extremely online, the untold story of fame, influence, and power on the internet. And she has a new podcast called Power User, which she certainly is one. So if you like themes where we dissect the internet and what's going on on it and all the weird shit that happens and how it affects us all, you'd probably enjoy listening to our podcast. Taylor Lorenz, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me.

We did just spend like an hour before we hit the record button and talking about Katie Perry's new single and our complex feelings about it. So maybe something on that to come. But for now, when did you first become aware of Hawkins? Tua. I think I saw the video on TikTok or Instagram. It was just getting re-shared. And I saw the raw video. And I have to say, it didn't really stand out to me. I was like, oh, one of those other videos. And then it was like shortly after it, I mean, it just like blew up. It was like, you know, when you see something and then you suddenly see like all this discourse about it. I have to say, I did not see the original video like before it all blew up. Like I, so I first witnessed Hawk Tua. I can't believe we're about to talk about this for 90. minutes. But we are, and there's good stuff here, I promise. I was scrolling on Twitter on June 23rd, and there was this tweet that was making the rounds by the tens of thousands. Some right-wing political influencer tweeted a picture of this tan, young, blonde woman, smiling, and wrote, OMG, the LGBTQ crowd is mad because the hawk to a girl is stealing their attention during Pride Month.

Now, I am, you know, as the title of Taylor's book goes, I am extremely online. I did not know who the hell this person was. I thought Hawk Tua was her name when I first read this tweet. I didn't know. I had no context for the video. I clapped back because I was like, this is silly. Why are the LGBTQs being pitted against this random white woman who I've never seen in my life her attention during June?

And so I wrote, the LGBTQ crowd does not know who this is and we are listening to Chappell Road. In the replies, people started sending me the video of this girl describing how she likes to spit on a dick during a blowjob, Hocktua. And I thought she was lovely. And I didn't understand why I was being pitted against her for Pride Month attention. I remember seeing that tweet too. But I think that that first tweet that you're talking about ended up sort of defining the discourse around Hoctua. It became extremely political. It was politicized immediately. How does this random girl who's like, partying in Nashville one night and talking about how she likes to give head, become a mascot for like Donald Trump's campaign.

Well, the internet works in funny ways. So let's work backwards a little bit. And who is Hawk Tua? I've done my research. She's a 21-year-old girl named Haley Welch. She lives in a town called Belfast, Tennessee. Belfast, Tennessee is a town of 800 people. She's lived there her whole life with her grandmother.

And until recently, she worked. at a bedspring factory where in an interview she said that she would wake up at 2 a.m. every day to go to work, which I don't know how bedspring factories operate, but I guess you have to wake up at 2 a.m. to get to them. She describes herself as like a, you know, small town, very southern girl. She has a deep southern accent. She has never had social media prior to this blowing up, which I think is interesting because she clearly never had any like entertainment or influence her aspirations and that feels notable because now it's like people know that these viral moments can lead to careers and it feels like now that's something that people like consciously aspire to.

Notably, she had never been on an airplane, though I assume by the time this goes up, she will be on one to Los Angeles. The Fateful Night on June 9th, Haley Welch, now known as the Hawk Toa Girl, was attending the Country Music Association Fest, the CMA Fest, in Nashville. And she was, you know, getting drunk in the streets with her friends. friend when, and a man on the street type TikToker, you know, there's people who like run up to you in public parks with microphones and they're like, what color is your bedroom? What do you think about Israel and everything in between? Asked her for her tips on making a man go crazy in bed.

Can we talk for a second about the epidemic of street TikTokers? It's such a plague. I feel like it's completely taken over and you cannot walk the streets in certain areas of West Hollywood or New York or other major cities without these people. Atlanta, they're all over Atlanta. They're everywhere. And I'm, listen, like, I, like, don't even go to Washington Square Park anymore in New York City because it's like there's literally just 10 people with microphones and, like, a small camera crew mealing around being like, should, you know, if gender equality, then should

women be splitting the bill? It's just like the most annoying. Gay son or thought daughter. Gaye sat under thought daughter. Like, both. I don't know. My hot take is as a content. as a content creator myself. I'm not trying to gatekeep content creation, but I just think it's like,

I think it's like a lazy form of content. It is the laziest form of content. I want to gatekeep it because they're exploiting strangers for content all day and asking inflammatory questions. Like, what are you adding to the world? And I'm not talking about the side talk guys or whatever, people that I think are like funny and creative and doing, doing this, you know, years ago. It's like, it's this more recent plague of people that they're just kind of assholes you know like they're not respectful of especially when people want their privacy they like you know they're kind of trolls they're total trolls and whenever i see a video just in this style and because of the part of the internet that i'm on it's usually like political in like in nature like i've seen a lot of these people and it's frankly oftentimes like zionist man on the street reporter trolling college students like what is free palestine actually mean and every and they do numbers like that kind of kind of content is so deceptive and you can edit it to, you know, come out any way you want it to. And it's like, anytime I see that type of content gaining traction, I'm like, no, we have to be above this.

I guess this is just the content ecosystem in which we all live for better or for worse. And Haley Welch would soon find out that she'd become the center of that content ecosystem. So this guy asked her, what's one move in bed that makes a man go crazy every time? Oh, you got to give him that huck to and spit on that thing. You get me. And the rest is history. The funny thing, too, with that video is that if you keep watching, you hear her go, if I see this in my 4-U page, I'm going to cry.

And it's like, I think she's seen herself on the 4-E page more than once at this point. On June 27th, 18 days later, Haley Welch quit her job at the Bedspring factory, which I'm really proud of her for. She no longer has to wake up at 2 a.m. to go work at a bedspring factory. She has since hired management and a PR team. she set up a merch store under a website called 16minutes. Life, which is so funny to me because it's a play on the 15 minutes of fame. And she's like, no, I'm having my 16 minutes, which I think is fucking brilliant.

She, you know, the merch, it gets interesting. The merch is, it says Hawk to a 24, like a presidential campaign. And it is in the same graphic design as the Reagan Bush 84 slogan, which a lot of her merch is like this kind of like republic. in America coded stuff. Sales have allegedly surpassed $60,000. She has started making like club and party appearances and apparently her fee for that is $30,000. She went on stage with Zach Bryant, who's one of the biggest country stars of our time, sang with him, yelled Hock Tua into the microphone, which I also saw a video of this. She just goes up to the microphone and she yells,

Hock Tua! And the caption attached to the video. when I saw it online was from, you know, ostensibly another gay person. And they just wrote, there's a whole world out there that we don't even know about. Which is how I feel about this. Like, I don't know. Can you speak to the segregated internets a little bit? I was very involved in a sorority in college. And I went to a big state school.

What? And yeah, this is very like that internet, like barstool internet, right? Totally. And, you know, I went to school out west in Colorado, not. in the south, but I feel like it's very like southern culture too, kind of wrapped into it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's very white. I do feel like we have to define the part of this, the part of the internet that this initially took over. Before it arrived at my like, you know, gay doorstep essentially. It's, it's very white. It's like people in their 20s and 30s. It's like barstool.

It's call her daddy. It's, I don't know. I saw it described online by Max Reed as the Zinternet. Zinn, Z-Y-N being like tobacco gum or something, like nicotine, like chewable nicotine or something? Please tell me you at least know about Zinn. I don't really know about Zinn. Matt, Zin is like the thing.

Zin is like, okay, so back in the day, all of the, like, frat guys had dip. And then now they're all obsessed with Zin. Zin is like nicotine. And they're all completely addicted to it. And it's just like chewing tobacco. No, it's, it's nicotine.

It's not tobacco. It's nicotine. It's just nicotine. Oh. Everyone listening to this is going to think I'm so stupid. Guys, I do, I do acrylic nails and Britney Spears. I don't know about it. They're the pouches.

It's an oral pouch. What does that mean? I just have friends that like cannot keep this shit out of their mouth. Oh, it's just a nicotine pouch. And it contains a lot more nicotine, I guess, than other pouches. So people really like it. But it's nicotine. It gives you like a buzz, you know?

Like the head rush. Kind of like, it's like, you know, when you have a cigarette or whatever, you know how it like, so people will just like, they get addicted to Zin. And it's like a big thing. thing in like frat culture and like finance bro culture. So yeah, so she's appealing to the Zinternet, which is mostly white people, 20s and 30s, predominantly male. But some women.

I would say it's women. I would say there's a female side of it, which is the call her daddy kind of like sorority girl. It feels like everyone who is like in sororities a few years ago and has since like graduated and is now like an adult on the internet. Yes. And they're like a project manager somewhere. They've got their random job and their job is certainly not their identity. and, you know, they have fun and they watch the game and they go out partying.

And they also, it's kind of a weird, I mean, the barstool world is also really, it is kind of adjacent to like reality TV. Do you watch Summer House? No. Sorry, I shouldn't have said it like that. I just don't know what the fuck any of this is. Right. So she's this part of the internet, which has become huge.

The extended barstool universe is enormous. So she's capturing the hearts of millennial white. nicotine pouch chewing America essentially. Things just explode from there. There are paparazzi staked outside of her and her grandma's house. She's in talks, according to TMZ for a reality show about her life. She's charging these five-figure appearance fees. She's said of herself, I'm nobody special. I'm just a small town girl. I want to contextualize this a little bit because I feel like looking at like the arc of influencer history and the history of like viral phenomena on the internet makes it make more sense that a drunk girl who talked about giving head on the streets of Nashville

to some random TikTok guy with a microphone and is now making six figures by the end of the year as a result. It makes more sense if you put it into context. So Twitter user Vanilla Opinions wrote, this feels like something that would happen in 2011. And I feel like that's incredibly true. I want to ask you, I feel like viral human being is a genre. Can you tell me where like the viral humans started? The second half of the 2000s were kind of defined by this era where you would have these YouTube videos that went viral usually with people in them.

So it would be like Charlie bit my finger, right? Or Teizonday, the chocolate rain guy. Like you would have these people kind of blow up either for being in a funny video, the bed intruder guy. And they would kind of get fame. It wasn't really, it was internet fame at the time. It wasn't mainstream. Like the internet world hadn't merged with. the mainstream world. So they were kind of like internet stars, the double rainbow guy.

Oh, it's a double rainbow. I wrote his obituary from the New York Times. Yeah. He was, it was a lot of people, I know unfortunately, but it was a lot of people like that, you know, that kind of like blew up because of a single piece of content that was getting manually shared through links. When I was like researching for this episode, I was looking at some of these people. Two of them that I made note of, one was the bed intruder guy whose name was Antoine Dodson. And he was the guy who was like, hide your kids, hide your wife, hide your kids, hide your wife. He's clamming in your windows.

He's nasty your people are trying to rape him so you need to. Had your kids. Had your wife. Had your kids. Had your wife. Had your kids. Had your wife. Had your kids.

Had your wife. And his sister allegedly had her home broken into and a man attempted to rape her. The man who broke into her home attempted to rape her. And so this guy, Antoine Dodson, was then filmed on like the local news. and he was like, there's a guy going around, you have to protect yourself. And he said the famous words, hide your kids, hide your wife. This went super viral because he was like, it basically went viral because it was African-American vernacular English, which was a lot of the humor in a lot of these early viral moments, I feel.

It was like white people consuming, I'm going to get so SJW so quickly. But it really does feel like a lot of the early examples, which the other one I have written down was the Kimberly Wilkins ain't nobody got time for that. A lot of this was just like white people consuming black suffering and also like AVE in ways that came across is comical. Yeah. I mean, I think it was a mix of a lot of different content. That was certainly a huge part of it.

Yeah. There was also like keyboard cat guy or, you know, like there was also just like these random characters. But in terms of who made, who was made like an internet star, it was a lot of black people. It was a lot of black people who never really saw a dime for the most part. No. So Antoine Dodson is so crazy looking back on it because this was like, this was the aftermath of an attempt of an attempted break in and rape.

And then it turned into like, hide you kids, hide your wife. Like auto tune remix, which was a lot of YouTube humor back in the day. It was just a lot of like remixing songs, which is part of why the Hawk Tua thing, which has also been remixed into a song, feels so 2010. But Antoine Dodson, like, tried to capitalize a little bit off of this flash in the pan viral moment. And nothing really happened. Like, nothing really happened. Well, there was no infrastructure to monetize back then at all.

Right. I mean, it had not been built. People looked down on anyone attempting to make money. You were, like, really villainized and attacked. Like, and the e-commerce infrastructure wasn't there. You couldn't spin up a merch site. We didn't have Shopify shops that you can do over. night and like the internet was so immature even if you wanted to do stuff like that the platforms

weren't there to do that right so it was really hard like there was still it was still a sort of environment very dominated by gatekeepers right well but simultaneously like these people were creating nonetheless and the culture that they were creating you know ain't nobody got time for that hide your kids hide your wife like these were co-opted by brands who did make money of course from the culture and that's what was the case for years I mean, I don't even think that that really changed in a meaningful way, really until 2020, when you started to have public conversations around credit online. But these people also, they rose really quickly and then they fell really quickly.

And it was sort of like you have this, this like ladder that you would go on. And of course, the top of the ladder is an appearance on the Ellen show. And then that's it. That's peak. Like, you made it. I just want to mention Kimberly Wilkins for a second. She was this woman, a black woman, who she escaped from a fire in her apartment complex. and she was describing like the smoke and like coughing and stuff and she was like

well i woke up to go give me a cold pop and then i thought somebody was barbecue i said oh lord jesus it's a fart then i ran out i didn't grab no shoes or nothing jesus i ran for my life and then the smoke got me i got bronchitis ain't nobody got time for that If you were alive during 2010 or whatever, which it's wild that, oh my God, I'm going to sound old, but it's wild that you could be listening to this podcast and not have been alive in 2010. But if you were there, this was, you could not escape. Ain't nobody got time for that. Kimberly Wilkins, she made a few TV appearances.

She did like a couple like local TV commercials. She had a cameo in a Tyler Perry movie. She had tried to start a barbecue sauce company, but it didn't work out. And she also tried to like sue people who. were capitalizing off of her stick to no avail. Basically, it's just, it's clear that, like, some of these people were, like, in the early aughts wanted to capitalize off of their viral moments and the fact that they became these overnight celebrities.

But what's unclear is if they ever did successfully. Yeah. There's actually a good episode of this podcast, The 16th Minute, by Jamie Loftus, who interviews people kind of, like, after. She has a two-part series on Antoine Dodson and sort of, like, what happened. and the aftermath. I think, I mean, I wrote a lot about Teizonday back in this era, too, the Chocolate Rain guy. He was like one of the first YouTube stars. The Chocolate Rain was like one of the most early viral videos. It was this song that he was singing. Chocolate rain. Some stay dry and

others feel the pain. The song was actually about systemic racism, although nobody even got that. And he talked about his attempts to capitalize on it. You know that he gave away. that song for free because he didn't know and there was like no sense of like digital ownership, digital rights. So I mean, Antoine came a couple years after that, but there was no, even if you wanted to do these things, you would have had to get like management, you know. And then comes mid 2010s, the Ellen show. The Ellen show obviously existed before the mid-2010s, but it was it was in the mid-2010s that Ellen started featuring people who went viral for whatever odd reason, like the ones were describing. So do you want to describe, like that was such a

a real thing. I would say it was like I feel like she started around 2013. You know, she started leaning into kind of whatever was the big viral thing online. I would say the early part of the 2010s, Ellen correctly realized, or her producers rather, that getting these people from the internet to talk on like a mainstream platform would get a lot of attention. At this time, pretty much the entire rest of the mainstream media was ignoring viral fame and internet fame. And it was like a joke and maybe they'd write an article and embed the YouTube video, but like they weren't really taking these people seriously. Not that Ellen ever took them that seriously, but Ellen started to have these people on. It was some early YouTube people, but really Vine is when she sort of like

started to like hit her stride. And then it was like Alex from Target, damn Daniel, people from the memes. Like you went viral. That was, you know, that was like the peak of your journey. I mean, it became a thing of like, oh, if you start, if you got like 100 likes on something, people would be like, are you ready for the Ellen call? You know what's really crazy, Matt. When the Ellen show was ending, before it ended, I wanted to write this big piece about how it was the peak of the peak of internet fame. And her producers, I ended up talking to some people about it. We were supposed to schedule interviews. And then they like completely ghosted me. And I think it was because all of the controversy stuff was coming out about her, basically. But allegations of toxic workplace.

You just can't do that because of woke. Some producer there recognized this formula because Because the clips would go very viral on YouTube too. She would get this interview of the person and that would travel on YouTube. Well, that's the thing. It was like she would find the most viral thing and then she would make it go 10 times more viral. Well, she would bring it to like the mainstream adult audience. Right. Right.

And the reason I think that this doesn't really work anymore because even, I mean, Ellen was still going until a few years ago, but even by the time Ellen had ended, this segment didn't really work the same way anymore because you don't need mainstream. mainstream media validation anymore to like skyrocket to fame. Like you can do that just online. It's not even validation. It's that the media used to be an intermediary between the internet and mainstream audiences. This is why something like the dress would also never happen. The dress was this post on Tumblr, right? Remember in 2015? The dress was this like the blue, was it blue and white, was it black and gold. It was a photo of a dress that was shared on Tumblr. It went super viral on Tumblr,

but it wasn't until a BuzzFeed editor took it and put it on BuzzFeed.com that it like blew up the internet. You needed that intermediary to reach the masses. Now, if that happened today, it would just be the original post. Like that content would just, there is no like intermediary basically. And I think Ellen, that's why we didn't need Ellen. Also, the internet's not a monoculture anymore the way it was in the mid-2010s. What's so interesting again in like taking notes for this episode, I'm really just interested in relation to like Hocktua and like how this girl is blowing up and making so much money so quickly. I was looking at this like roster of all these other people who similar things happened to, who they shot up to like such unimaginable amounts of fame overnight from really young ages for

really stupid reasons. And I was like looking at basically what happened to all of them and like what happened to the people who went on Ellen. So do you remember Alex from Target? What do you remember from Alex? Of course. What, okay. This is something that it's like you think it's dumb making a fallacious.

joke and going famous. Imagine you're just doing nothing. He was like working checkout. Yeah. Yeah. Who was Alex from Target? Alex from Target was this young guy who was working at Target and somebody took a picture of him. It was shared to Twitter. It kind of just blew up. Basically, he blew up for being like a hot, a generic hot guy. Yeah. Do you know how old he was? Oh, God. I'm scared to think of that because he was young. Do you remember how sexualized everything was like the conversation around it? Yes. Yes, because, well, I will say, though, that his audience was a lot of, it was a lot of like tween girls. It was. Like, he was very much like, that was the like MagCon, you know, Nash, Greer, Cam Dallas, like, era of the internet.

But how old? I would say maybe 15, 16. Yeah, he was 16. 16. He was a high school student and he had a part-time job at Target. Yeah, someone just uploaded a photo of him, like, bagging their groceries, essentially. and I remember distinctly, I remember seeing the photo, first of all, being like, wow, he's so cute. And we were the same age. I remember, like, refreshing his Instagram that day.

And it was like every second you refreshed it went up by a thousand followers. Like, I had never in my life seen someone skyrocket like that, especially for no reason. And it made even less sense then because we did not have a history of this happening, not really. Like, I think that we were starting to see random. people blowing up from these viral moments. I think he was one of the first where there was just, it was almost nonsensical. Like, it's not like he really did anything. He quite literally did nothing. He was working his part-time job at Target. But so he balloons to over a million followers on Instagram and over half a million on Twitter. Of course, he gets the Ellen call. And I was watching this

clip last night of him on Ellen. And it's so interesting because, I mean, I'm sure adults knew this at the time, but like, looking back on it, it's like, he was a little boy. And he's sitting there, like, fidgeting. And she's like, so how does it feel to become famous? And he's like, I don't know. I was just bagging my grocery, you know? So what ended up happening with him is, so he dropped out of school almost immediately because there were paparazzi waiting outside of his high school. And, you know, like, girls would, like, swarm him at the mall because 50. years ago, you know, that's what you did after school. I think I have a longing to be older than I am, like back when I was in school. But so he was homeschooled and then he, for, he moved to L.A.

Because he immediately got this management team around him who was like, you have to move to L.A. You have to start doing Instagram. You have to, you know, he like went on tour. He went on Digitor, which do you remember what that one? Of course I remember Digitore. I know Meredith, who started it. Because I think it's confusing now to imagine that there were just like, there was a time in the 2010s where it was just like traveling bands of like a basically 15 year old boy influencers who would like go meet screaming crowds. Yeah. I mean, there was this era in the really early and mid 2010s that was defined by touring because you couldn't make money. There was no way to really monetize very quickly on the internet. Again, the e-commerce world had not progressed as quickly. Merch was still evolving. It wasn't this thing that you could turn around as fast. And so people to make money would go on tour. And so you had MagCon was one of the original tours, Meet and Greet Conference. I had the biggest crush on Cameron Dallas.

Matt, when I worked at People Magazine, some fan account had posted that Cameron Dallas was coming, which he was. He came up for an interview. They had to get security because so many girls showed up downstairs trying to get into the Time Inc. offices. It was a really crazy moment in influencer culture, which I don't even think they were called influencers yet. No, they were called, well, at the time there was no language for it. So people were associated with their platforms. They were called viner. Oh, Viners. Right. Where is Alex from Target now? He works for UPS. He loads UPS trucks in the morning. I was reading, speaking of People

magazine, I was reading an interview that he did with them in the last few months, actually. He totally dropped off the face of the internet a few years ago. And he basically just described how he, like, as like a teenager, after he went viral for being hot while bagging groceries, a bunch of managers got around him, bled him dry for money, and he never wanted to do all of the influencer shit. He didn't care. He said he tried YouTube and he hated it. He tried Instagram and he hated it. He did touring and he hated it.

And he was like, I just, I don't want this. And it's funny because I remember anger then from people being like, well, why does that have to be him? It could be anyone. And it's true. there was a lot of jealousy that he had like skyrocketed to fame for no reason. But ultimately it was just and he said like he was like, yes, I make a lot less money piling packages for UPS and I am so much happier. I think it's so interesting that people can't really understand when people don't want

fame. I think that fame in America, everyone in America wants like money or fame. And like money and fame are kind of like so tightly wound, I think just in American culture, like this notion of like, you're famous and you're wealthy or whatever. And like, I just think it's so funny when these people come out that are like, actually this is terrible or I want to drop out of it. There's always this fascination. And it's like, why? You know, like, why wouldn't you want this thing that everyone is supposed to inherently

want? And it's like, because it's terrible. It's actually the reality of it is terrible, especially for someone like that where it's like truly zero to 60. And you have this whole secondary industry of exploitative people that crop up around you. Yeah. And I mean, there were a number of examples of this on. Ellen, she had the damn Daniel.

Damn Daniel. That's fucking iconic, those kids. But they also, like, the boys involved in the damn Daniel video also, you know, flash in the pan, but ultimately retreated from the spotlight, didn't want it anymore. And then, you know, you had the people who Ellen did provide a stepping stone to, like, unimaginable fame, like James Charles. Like, James Charles was an Ellen kid, which I feel like a lot of people don't realize. I didn't realize that.

He was an Ellen. Because he went on, was that when he went viral for his, like, makeup stuff. It was the yearbook photo. Yes. Oh, the yearbook photo? Yes, of course. Oh, my gosh. James Charles, hello.

James Charles was literally Hocktuah a long time ago. Yes. I totally forgot about that. James Charles got famous. I love talking about James Charles lore. That's why I'm doing it on Patreon all summer. James Charles got famous because he was in high school and he took his yearbook photo. And then he got them back and he didn't like it.

And so he went and he was like, I want to do a retake, but I'm going to bring a ring light to my yearbook photo. and I'm going to like beat my face to the gods. And it was, you know, it was very like mid-2010's full beat, like painted on eyebrows. He had his like man bun, which was also kind of the thing then. And he had this like crazy like face tuned beyond belief yearbook photo with the ringlight. That blew up on the internet. And then it blew up even further because Ellen was like, you're crazy for doing this.

We have to get you on the show. And he went on Ellen. And then he became like the first cover girl boy. And that was his initial skyrocketing to fame. You know, it turned out obviously that. the yearbook photo ringlight thing was actually fake and it was just a photo shoot that he did in his house. But that's how he got started. And for him, it was, you know, Ellen turned out to be a stepping stone towards this, you know, enormously successful career. Totally just forgot about this.

I think because James went on to have so much lore and so many other viral moments that you forget his origin story. Yeah. I would like to take a quick, quick break from the show to give a shout out to the sponsor of today's episode, Rocket Money. Something that I spend a lot of time thinking and getting frustrated about lately is how with the amount of streaming services we now have to pay for for TV shows every month, we've basically just looped back around to paying for cable packages. Why are we doing that? What's going on? That is a problem that is much bigger than me, but a consequence of that problem is that all of us are paying for a lot more in subscription services every month than we realize. Most Americans think they're paying around $62

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If you'd like to try it out, feel free to go to rocketmoney.com slash fruity. That's rocketmoney.com slash fruity. Now let's get back to the show. That was as far as I had about like the history of like viral people. Do you want to bridge the gap from like Ellen to like now on like TikTok how how people make these careers? I'll tell you the moment that I think all of this changed. I think 2020 hit and everything on the internet kind of fractured. Like first of all, 2020 was a year that forced like pretty much every holdout online.

Everyone became super online. And that was a year that like internet culture truly became mainstream culture because there was no like IRL culture. I know. We were all making that fucking whipped coffee. Yeah. That was also the year that TikTok broke out and went mainstream and became this new platform and no one manufactures fame faster than TikTok. And so I think we went from having this sort of like internet main character in the 2010s to having this much more fractured internet with much faster cycles of virality and not needing the mainstream media anymore and shows like Ellen to kind of cement these people. Like Charlie DeMilleo, she blew up without the help of. of, you know, like the media really. Like she was viral before even the first piece was written about her. Like she had already sort of hit a level of mainstream.

Charlie DeMilleux is another person who I think I could talk for so long about. Not really because of Charlie DeMelio because, I mean, you're right. I mean, it was early TikTok in 2020. There was a whole crop of these people. Charlie Demelio, her sister, Addison Ray, this like whole friend group that built around them. The hype house. Noah Beck, Bryce Hall, like all these people. boys. There were like obviously like executives at TikTok and then all of these talent agencies too who were like,

okay, we're going to manufacture these people into celebrities. And the, the D'Amilio sisters did eventually go on Ellen, but it wasn't for like a while after. Like she was already. Right. Reped by UTA and all of that. I totally forgot that they went on Ellen because it didn't even matter anymore. It didn't matter and it was too late. And at that point it was like an afterthought. And I think that's what was the difference of 2020. And I also think it's like, even in 2020 when we think of like the hype house on the internet and stuff like even then that was still more of an internet monoculture than we have now like there's so few things I think that's why things like the baby gronk rised up liby done or whatever go so what did you just what just came out of your mouth wait don't you remember the baby the baby gronk the hoopify video baby gronk rising up

liby done none of these words are in the bible Matt oh my god this is okay this is also like sports universe. I know. There's a very, I know who Livy Dunn is. She's a gymnast. But I know her because I watch gymnastics. Wait, oh my God. This is so funny. There's an NBC article. Who is Baby Gronk? Did Livy Riz him up? And what does any of this mean? Baby Gronk is a young football player. He's like nine years old. His dad has turned him into a social media star. He did a collaboration with Libby Dun, the LSU gymnast. And there's this guy who produces these TikToks under the name Hoopify. and they're kind of like parody level like sports commentary. And he made a video about baby gronk rising up Livy Dunn and it went super viral.

But this is my point, Matt, is that there is no mono, there is no one internet. These people are huge stars in their own right. And like Livy Dunn is like a major celebrity in like the sports. Like I mean, she's bar stowl adjacent to. Is this is this like the like Charlie XX Versacex Versace boots the house down, snatch my wig for straight people? Maybe. Like, I don't know what's coming out of your mouth right now.

But I'm happy for all of them. But it's like, I just think the internet is so fractured. There's so many people that are so huge or relevant or viral in their certain niches. And I think that's like what happened with the hawk to a girl. Like I think she went super viral in this niche and then suddenly she broke through in this mainstream way that we really haven't seen in a minute. I mean, maybe Alex Earle too. Like you have the TikTok stars, but she blew up from a viral video, not a TikTok.

I mean, I guess it was a TikTok. She blew up, like, she blew up not from content that she herself created. I think people know who the Hawk toa girl is because she got plugged into the like barstool infrastructure, basically. Immediately. And I think when you get plugged into that like mainstream sort of like bro culture, like you, I mean, I think Alex Earl did too, to an extent. Yeah. And I do feel now is the time. where we're going to get into the politics of all of this in a moment.

I do feel we have to address one of the elephants in the room with all of this, which is if you look at the online conversation around really any of these people, right now it's about Hock Tua, but I saw this a lot about Alex Earle and also Bobby Althoff, the podcaster who like mostly interviews black rappers in a really monotone voice. she's like, well, why do you like making music? And I think one of the things that comes up a lot with these people is this idea of rewarding white mediocrity. Well, I think that's a common theme throughout these internet stars, right?

It's like, are people that go viral. And it's not to say that they have no talent or, you know, Alex Earl doesn't work hard or whatever in her own right. It's this, like you said, it's a white mediocrity. and it's a lot of cisgender, beautiful white women or beautiful white men that are young and attractive in extremely conventional ways and ultimately are pretty conventional people too. Like they're not going to challenge power. They're not radical.

They're not outside our existing understanding of gender or, you know, they're very mainstream. And I think that's also why they're so quickly adopted by the right and platformed by the right. Because like you mentioned in the beginning with that tweet, it's like, well, this is a reaction. These are the people that we want to become famous, right? These like generic sort of paper thin people that ultimately don't challenge the status quo. Yeah. I mean, again, I am terminally online, but I'm terminally online in an enormously different way

than anything approaching the barstool extended universe. And like, for me, I don't know, you put Hawk Tua and Alex Earl and Alex Cooper, that's the call her daddy one, Alex Cooper in a lineup. These are all beautiful. I'm sure they're all lovely, but, like, they are thin blonde women with spray tans. You know, you see a pattern with who is allowed into this, like... Well, it's also like, it's the Sydney Sweeney is the death of woke thing, too. I did make a Patreon episode about that.

It's, yes, the Wright sees a, like, beautiful white, like, conventionally beautiful white blonde woman get famous. And they're like, wokeness is ended. Finally, you know? And it's like, what are you talking about? I think also, like, you know, in terms of who's going to get. brand deals and who can be sort of slotted into the existing internet entertainment complex, you're going to see these sort of generic white people because that's who remains most monetizable

in our society. That's who remains most aspirational. You know, for instance, when Antoine Dodson blows up, like, he's not seen as an aspirational, funny, relatable figure. Like, he's not going to get like a L'Oreal brand deal or whatever, you know, like these big time companies. Like, when a attractive, thin white blonde girl goes viral. Like brands are like, oh, great. You know, let's start sending her products. Let's start working with her. Let's start paying her to show up at clubs and do appearances.

Like if she was fat, if she was queer, if she was literally anything but what she is, she would not be getting access to those opportunities. She wouldn't be able to monetize the way that she could. She is. Right. And tell me if you think this is accurate, but it's like there's a level of like spontaneity and like, you know, democracy and how these people go viral. And yes, they are.

propped up by like people like us, just users of the internet who find them and find them funny or find their viral moment funny and share them. And that's, you know, that's democratic. But they're also held up by very quickly by management teams and brands and podcasting networks. And those are people who decide if these people are worth cashing in on or not. And the people who they decide to prop up, those are decisions that are made. Like whether or not a PR team who establishes that an up-and-coming content creator can have a 25,000. appearance fee, like, they're choosing who they're going to work with. Exactly.

And it is not coincidental that they all look exactly the same. Of course not, because that has been the sort of, like, ideal of beauty in America for a very long time and, like, aspirational beauty. It's like, yeah, this girl next door, the beautiful, thin, perfect 21-year-old downhome girl that isn't going to think too hard and just wants to have a good time. I remember when I saw Charlie DeMilio, like, blowing up. up and she was 15 when the whole TikTok thing started. Charlie Demelier, if you're living under a rock, she's kind of became the face of

TikTok very quickly for making these dance videos that now everyone associates with TikTok. But she got over like 100 million TikTok followers. Her family has a reality show that's been airing for multiple seasons on Hulu. They've all built brands around themselves, including her failed Republican politician father, Mark. And I just remember hearing her like speak in interviews for the, and she's, you know, thin and white and very pretty. And I just remember like hearing her speaking in interviews for the first time where, you know, she wasn't lip syncing over a song. And I was just like, does she, does she want to be here right now? Or are a lot of people making a lot of money off of her, including, and this is the

feel like, the thing I feel impassioned about when it comes to Charlie DeMelio, but like her parents, her parents built brands around her, like, haphazard fame, which I always. just felt really uncomfortable with. I mean, I think she's another one that she was at least like in dance, which is I would say entertainment adjacent. Yeah, she's an excellent dancer. Yeah. I think in that situation, the family and same with Addison Ray, it's like you had this like family that also was seeking fame and all of that. And I actually, I think Charlie and Dixie are very sweet. And I think ultimately like the Kardashians, I mean, they're sort of like their original famous family, right? And you have all these other sort of families trying to follow in the footsteps.

And I mean, that's what they got a lot of criticism for that. I think it was the season one of their reality show. And when Dixie or Charlie is saying, like, we don't want to do this. Like, people were like, oh, you seem ungrateful or whatever, right? Which is the biggest sin. Yeah. But it's like, it's like, take me back to high school. That was the same year that I did my story on Jolaya Harmon, the girl who made the renegade dance. And that was like right before COVID started. But it was like just that was when you started to have a lot of these conversations. around credit and around virality and who gets the brand deals and who gets the sponsorships and who who's sort of like ushered into the Hollywood world.

And a lot of them were white dancers who were ushered in off the backs of like dances that were created by these black creators who do not see a fraction of the success, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Which I think people started to recognize finally, you know, like there was that like reckoning. It's just that that doesn't, it's not a TikTok problem and it was framed as this TikTok problem. of like, and it's like, no, this is just systemic racism. Like this is how it is in every aspect of our media and culture and entertainment and framing it as a TikTok problem. I think ultimately, I don't think it really did as much to kind of fix the broader issue.

I think there are really valid reasons to be critical when someone like Hoctua immediately skyrockets to this like level of fame and wealth and attention that she has, like, you know, some of the things we've been talking about. but then there's also, and I just had to put this in my outline because I cannot stop thinking about it, is like the misogyny involved in all of this. And it's like, speaking of the Kardashians, like, I don't know, Hawk to a girl is just the latest in a long line of women who become famous for a number of reasons, but who get lumped in this famous for being famous pejorative, which it is a pejorative when people say that. It's like, you know, Paris Heldon, famous for being famous. And like, and that was never true, by the way. They were never famous for being famous. They were always famous for entertaining people primarily online.

I mean, with Kim Kardashian, also, she was a reality star. I mean, Paris Hilton was a reality star. Like, that is entertainment. I think now we recognize reality TV as a valid form of entertainment. But because it was a more accessible level of fame than traditional scripted TV, people were just like, oh, they're famous for nothing. Now we recognize actually minting a good, like a good reality star, like that is its own skill. and type of fame and we recognize it as valuable.

But we didn't recognize it as valuable. And then when Kim blew up on the internet, we also didn't recognize internet fame as valuable. Oh my God. It was just like, oh, so what? So she gets her tits out and she takes selfies? Exactly.

I wrote this piece last year about the 10th anniversary of selfie being word of the year. And I went back and looked at the media coverage of selfies. Oh, my God. You would have thought that the world was ending. Yes. It was like, How dare women put themselves in a photo they are narcissistic? And anyone who takes selfies is a narcissistic psychopath. Oh my God. I remember that so well. It was like there was a literal like cultural moral panic around selfies.

Yes. There was news. Barack Obama took a selfie and there, it was news articles all over. It was like so unprofessional. How could he be president? It's so fucking stupid. But it just shows like, I mean, I wrote about this too, but like so much. mind behavior, especially selfies, is pioneered by young girls, teen girls specifically. And with selfies, it was the first time a lot of women were sort of like putting themselves in their photos. And that was, and sharing themselves on the internet. And that was seen as like gosh and like attention. I mean, this is also like in the 2000s when we just called all these people like attention horrors. Yeah. That was like how they were referring to like mainstream female YouTubers. Yeah.

In like news articles and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Fame balls, fame horrors. Fame horrors. It's such deeply misogynistic language. Attention horror, which I think now is such a glamorous label. Now, yeah. Well, now it's kind of funny.

Whatever the Kardashians come up, I get so frustrated because there are so many amazing reasons to complain and critique and even hate the Kardashians. Kim Kardashian is a slave labor hustling queen of a fast fashion empire billionaire. And when you ask the average American why they hate her, it's because she had a sex tape and because she poses naked on Instagram. It's like, are you kidding? There is so much to work with here. And the thing that you fixate on is like a woman's sexuality. Like I hate to girl boss feminism on behalf of Kim Kardashian, but sometimes I have to do it.

Well, I mean, look, unfortunately famous rich billionaire women can also be victims of misogyny. that doesn't mean that we should defend, you know, all of the other evil shit that they do. But misogyny is real. And it does come for specific types of women. And I think especially women that are putting themselves out there in that way. And I mean, I totally agree with you on Kim and I would not defend her on many levels. But she did sort of pioneer a lot of influencer culture, which ultimately I think people have very misogynistic views of. Like you can hate her for a lot of things, but taking selfies and posting herself and expressing herself and expressing her.

online, I think is, it's not the most constructive. But it's interesting that the only ways that they've started to take her seriously, and I spoke at the same conference as her a few months ago in Germany, is through the money that she makes. It's like, listen, I don't like this slut, you know, but she's making lots of money. It's the same way they talk about like successful women on only fans. It's like, listen, you know, like totally. I don't agree.

But because this is America and we value money above all else, you have to convey a certain level of respect to people that are multi-millionaires or billionaires. And that's why, like, these women, they're always going to be seen through the lens of misogyny, but they command a certain level of power in these male-dominated spaces because of the money that they generate. Totally. And so hawk to a girl who I will bring everything back to, I think, for the rest of my life, is also being subject to like both valid critique about her skyrocketing to fame for virtually

nothing, but also crazy misogyny, as you can imagine, compounded by the fact that the joke that she made that made her viral was sexual. And so, you know, if there's misogyny happening online, uh, Andrew Tate will always be at the crime scene. And I do have a tweet from him here. Andrew Tate wrote, America would be a serious country if young blonde country girls went viral for their knowledge of the Bible as opposed to how they suck random men's cocks. But America is not a serious country. And it's Like, okay, first of all, especially ironic coming from Andrew Tate. But there's a lot of this like, she's getting famous for talking about spitting on a dick. I think that people, to your point, like, I think people mistake their anger at like systems that make people famous.

And like, I mean, I don't think Andrew Tate is necessarily concerned with systemic racism. But like, I think a lot of people providing more valid critiques are. And I do think that sometimes these criticisms that are ultimately at systems, or should be aimed at systems are taken out on individuals. Haley Welch, a hawk to a girl, has since made an Instagram that now has 1.4 million followers and steadily rising. Surely will be higher by the time this goes out. And all of the comments are like, like this comment, if you think we made the wrong girl famous.

And you'll go famous for anything, even just talking about sucking dick and like, you know, all of this stuff. And it's like, I understand that like America is a capitalist hellscape and like the idea that's someone could make a lot of money for effectively no reason. Betrays our sense of having to work for it and suffer for it and hustle more than she has or whatever. Just ignoring the fact that she's spent her life so far, waking up at 2 a.m. to work in a Bedspring factory.

But it's also just like you're mad at systems, maybe correctly so, but like leave Haley Welch alone. I think it's a mistake to think that she went famous just for the Hock Tua. Like I think that is a viral, like that is a term that's now viral in a way that like on fleak goes, you know, like these terms go viral. But also I think she has a charisma to her that is ultimately what captivated people. Because somebody else could have said the same words as her and it wouldn't have gone viral. And so I think like the opportunity there is like I could see her being part of the like podcast reality TV world or something. You know what I mean?

My hot take is I think she will totally have success. And I've seen these people like kind of like hand ring about. about like, just let her be a meme, let it die. And like, sure, whatever, but obviously that's not happening. I think as far as, like, viral memes go, I think she totally has the personality. I think she has the charisma. I think she has the accent. I think she'll do great.

And I think she wants it. Like, that's the thing at the end of the day is, like, she's talking about wanting to go on more podcasts and she's, like, doing these interviews at, like, her house with her grandma. Like, for what it's worth, unpopular though it may be, I'm rooting for you, Haley Welch. Famous last words. Yeah. They're going to burn me at the stake. Well, I mean, I don't, I'm not, I would say I'm not rooting against her.

I think we should be careful who we give a platform to. And that's concerning because I could also see her getting very sucked into the right-wing ecosystem and again, the barstool ecosystem, which does, you know, skew politically in certain ways. But I think she's ultimately harmless. Now, if she just goes and becomes a reality TV person and, you know, goes on, reality podcast, you know, like she could just be a totally harmless, like, entertainment person and I, I'm rooting for that. But you just never know how people are going to. You're right. And we

have arrived at that part in the outline. So, you know, I probably wouldn't be making a podcast about this, a hawk to a girl, if not for what we're about to talk about. This is really the elephant in the room, the literal elephant in the room, Republican symbol elephant in the room. That was good. That was funny. Thank you. Thank you. As soon as the hawk toa video, went viral, literally as soon as it went viral. The online right began commodifying Hock Tua as a political symbol, as a right-wing political symbol. Someone posted a picture on Twitter from a Trump rally in Virginia that I am going to send

you and have you describe. Oh, God. I hate this. So we're looking at a tweet from, I'm assuming some sort of political reporter, covering the Trump rally in Virginia. and it's two old men. One looks significantly older than the other, but they both have like big beards.

They're both wearing khaki shorts, those sunglasses and hats. I mean, they just look like, you know, that meme of like, you said something wrong on the internet and it's all the profile pictures

of like the men with the sunglasses and stuff. Like, that's what these two guys look like. Yeah. One has a Trump hat on. The other one has a hat that says dirty hands, clean money. And they're both wearing,

they're both wearing, these black t-shirts with Trump in front of the American flag that says hawk toa spit on that thing. I think it's interesting, especially because of Donald Trump, like the image in this video almost makes it sound like Donald Trump is saying hawk to us, but on that thing, like to a woman or something. I don't know. I think it's just shows how this meme has been co-opted. I think it's also interesting because like so much of Donald Trump's brand is misogyny and they'll like grab them by the pussy type shit that he's known for.

Yeah, it's just been co-opted into this right-wing meme. I read something from a woman named Andrea Catherine, another one of these right-wing people. She wrote, hear me out. The hawk to a girl fundamentally expressed conservative values. A woman pleasing a man in a heterosexual relationship, not being bitter towards men. That's why she resonated with so many people. I think it's so funny, the idea that blowjobs are like heterosexual. I mean, I have given many blowjobs.

jobs and none of them have been heterosexual. Let me just say that. I have I have hawk to it. It's been the furthest thing from from heterosexual. I can assure you that. This is like such galaxy brain. Like how, yeah, how can we make this sound trad? I mean, that was how she entered my life was this like viral tweet that was like, Hawk too is taking over Pride Month and the LGBTs are pissed. Meanwhile, not a single gay person I ever knew was like, can you believe that Hawk two is taking over? Brian. Like, this wasn't a thing. It was so manufactured. Also, like, if anything, she can be enjoyed by gay or straight

people. Well, why do you think she was co-opted immediately by the right? I mean, I have my own ideas, but I like to hear yours. I think she's Southern. She's white. She represents this, again, it's like the Barstool Internet, the Zinternet. It's the downhome, generic, not thinking too hard, not challenging the status quo, you know, just a hardworking, next door, girl next door, American. You know, like, that's sort of like the vibe, I think. The right has always seized on that, those sort of parts of culture. Yeah, I think they also just hate gay culture.

And so anytime a straight person goes viral that doesn't seem, you know, woke in some way, they can co-op her. I think if she had pink hair or, I don't know, like presented slightly less gender-conforming or something, right? Like, they would never adopt her. It's very much like her look and her aesthetic and her sort of demeanor that they want. I think she's being received. Like, okay, have you read her seen Gone Girl? Of course. Yeah. You know the monologue about like, I'm the cool girl? Yes. Yes. She's seen as that. Which the monologue,

if you haven't read it, it's, it's basically like Amy Dunn and Gone Girl being like, for years, I pretended to be the cool girl. Like, I always gave sex and never needed pleasure. I never argued. I was always there to serve a man. And like, I think they've constructed around Hawk to a Girl, like this entire identity where she just like loves like giving head and like being pretty. Yes. And that appeals a lot to conservative heterosexual men. And it's like she's kind of that fun college girl, right, that they love. Two dimensional.

Two dimensional and not giving her agency. Totally. And of course she isn't two dimensional. She is a human being. But the only insight we have into her is this like one moment where she's talking about like enjoying giving head. The one thing that made me want to jump out of a window was Rolling Stone calling her Gen Z's Dolly Parton. Yeah. Yeah.

Insane. I just feel like there's so much projection going on right now, not just in conservative world, but in the media. It's like, how can we, what boxes can we stick this girl into? And how can we sort of like place her and make her into something, you know, that explains why we should care about her? It's like everything has to be, and this is like a lot of what I just talk about on this podcast in general, but it's like everything has to be fit into the culture war.

Like it can't just be like a girl got drunk at a country music thing and like said like a funny fallacio joke to a TikToker. It's like, where does she fit into the election? Why? What does she think about Donald Trump? Yeah. Well, and so did you see what she said on the podcast about Donald Trump? Well, she said that she wouldn't, she said she wouldn't hawk to a on Donald Trump.

But then she later clarified that the only reason is because he's old. and she doesn't like old guys. Right. So as she is like exploding in conservative circles for some reason, she goes on this podcast before the Zach Bryan show. And they're basically paying like smash her pass. But the version of it that they did was like, would you hawk toa this guy or no?

Like, would you give this guy head? And they asked her if she would hawk to a Donald Trump. And she said absolutely not. When she said that she would not hawk to a Donald Trump, This was read by many as like an endorsement of Joe Biden, which is just how crazy things have gotten online. I think that's why she backtracked too. Because I think she's suddenly started to get a lot of heat. And also this is now her new fan base.

And I think she's immediately like, oh, well, I didn't, I just meant like he's old. So like I don't do old guys like, you know, like trying to like depoliticize it. Totally. Which it was never political in the first place. It was never politicized in the beginning. Can I send you a tweet to read? Oh, God. So this is a tweet from Laura Lumer, who is a far right-wing activist who has worked with Trump formally,

that she was banned from like every social media platform. She was also interestingly banned from a number of food delivery apps for violating non-discrimination rules. So, you know. Well, here she is now saying the degenerate hawk to a girl is anti-Trump. In her first video since going viral, she was asked about Donald. Trump, she said, it's a no from me. Stop giving her attention. Da-da-da-da. It's actually funny because Laura Lumer has terrible instincts on this stuff. Because it doesn't really matter if she supports Trump or not. They're going to co-opt her no matter what. And she can be successfully co-opted. She would

have to be so overly leftist and woke for them to not treat her. Like, and I think also, again, this is why she's backtracking. I actually don't think she's super political. She doesn't seem super political generally. I don't think she gives a shit. And also, Also, this context, it's a no for me. She's talking about whether she would suck his dick. So I want to send you also the follow up to this to have you read. Because there's a yet another cameo in this Twitter exchange that blew my fucking brain. Oh my God. Okay. Billionaire hedge fund founder Bill Ackman. Why the fuck? This is so like the funniest thing about Twitter is just like these rich people on there. It's like, why the fuck are you on here? You have a billion dollars. Laura, you got this one wrong. That was not the question she was asked. and I don't think you can determine her politics from this clip. You might want to review it again.

He's right. Laura Lumer sucks because she made me agree with Bill Ackman on something. She says, I stand corrected Bill Ackman. Upon further review, it turns out she was only talking about whether she would perform fallatio on President Trump. Rare Bill Ackman W. I just think this actually shows how Laura is, I mean, Laura's dumb anyway. But it's like in the right, again, the right wing doesn't need her to come out in support of Donald Trump for her to be co-opted by the right. Right. As long as she doesn't say like trans rights or something, they're going to be like, she's our girl, she's blonde and she loves giving head. Which is also funny because it's just like the right can't decide if it is pro or anti-sex. Like it's like fun loving and like anything like overt display or or you know signals of heterosexual sex are in this way like right wing coded. But then at the same time like this is the party that is trying to effectively outlaw recreational sex. And so that's the

The whole thing is just so, like, funny. There's just so many contradictions. What's insane, too, though, okay, this is the last tweet that I'm sending you. But what's insane too is that, like, when she said that she wouldn't give Donald Trump head on this podcast, there were some Democrats who were also like, see, hawk to a girl is ours. And it's like, everyone wants their piece of the pie. So I'm sending you one more. Oh, God. Okay.

So this account Biden's wins, which is just a crazy Biden. Apologist account says breaking. The hawk to a girl just absolutely demolished Donald Trump saying it's a no-go for her. Retweet to make sure all Americans know. Gen Z is speaking out against Donald Trump and his radical agenda. Okay, she said nothing of the sort. Nothing of the sort. Nothing any of these people are saying took place. She said I would not spit on Donald Trump's only because he's old, she later said. Like it's like it's just disgusting to see this happen. I hate it. I hate that this is like what our political system is driven by these days. The whole situation reminded me in a way of, do you remember last year the Richmond North of Richmond song?

Yes. Same thing. It was kind of the same thing. So last August, this guy called Oliver Anthony released a song, you may remember it, called Richmen North of Richmond, which was kind of this like brutal working class call to arms. he was just like singing in this like kind of really harsh raspy voice about like the centralization of political power and inflation he was saying like your dollar ain't shit and taxes being too high for the working class which was all good and fine but then he all he was like kind of punching in every direction with the lyrics to this song because he also was complaining about quote obese people milking welfare and so it's like he was like punching up at the establishment but then he was also punching down at people he perceived as like I don't know it was kind of kind of like the whole welfare queen joke if he was like angry that poor people were sucking resources from the country or something. And this immediately became like an anthem for the right. So much so that on the Fox News hosted Republican primary debate, it was played. And then the

candidates, including Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramoswamy, billionaire, were asked, why do you think the song is resonating so much? At which point Oliver Anthony, the singer of the song, Didn't he say like I don't really fuck with any of that? Yeah, he, he, he, exactly. He made this video and he was like, just to be clear, my song is criticizing Republican politicians as much as it is Democrats. And he was like, I don't like Biden or Trump or any of these people. And he got dropped so fast.

Yes. And that was the last we heard of him. The right generally, they have been able to capitalize. I mean, this is just Trumpism on this like populist message while also not doing anything. like, you know, like not actually like living up to it. Like these are like billionaires, right? Running the political establishment on both sides. But it's just interesting how like all of these like populist like working class songs or working

class people or like, you know, Haley like waking up at 2 a.m. To go to the factory. It's like that is sort of like Republican coded even though Republicans are like their policies are not helping those people necessarily like get a leg up. Totally. I mean, it's I think we talked about this in the episode that we did about Ollie London. but it's like, to me, Trump's biggest grift has been, like, his appeal to populism and his appeal to middle America. And everybody knows it's not true, but how he kind of like leans into the

idea of rags to riches, even though he, like, grew up shitting gold. But it's like populism remains very popular. That's also what drove Bernie Sanders success and RFK right now. Like, young people are mad at the system. And that message of hating on both parties actually resonates well with young people. But it's, it's really only the right. that is like speaking, not even with young people, with people of all ages, especially. Like everyone hates this capitalist healthcape that we live in that only benefits billionaires, you know? Like unless you're like a bootlicker, you recognize that the system sucks. And both political parties are responsible for upholding it.

I just feel like they're both like warring over like who can we like co-op for our own cause. And no one's doing anything to like fix any of the systemic issues or help. I also feel like there's a desperation to like tap the young vote because yeah. Obviously like, I mean, young people tend to be way more progressive. but are disillusioned with like this kind of like hell of the Democrat Party as it stands right now. And I think like vying for young people's vote is just manifesting in increasingly bizarre ways. Yes. Also it's like the DNC tweeting like HOTTO go vote.

Yes. It's like yes, the DNC tweeting like HOTTO to the polls. You know, it's like. It's like shut the fuck up. You guys just declared like transgender minor care like illegal. recently, you know, like, or whatever Biden did. Like, it's just, it's just like pandering on all sides. And I think that the right is just better at that pandering. Like, they're better at, like, messaging and co-opting these people and building this online universe to support their sort of

political ideology in a way that, like, the left doesn't have. Well, the left has it, but, like, liberals, like mainstream liberals are just posting shit like the Biden wins account, you know? Yeah. I don't know. What is the solution for? the left, like, do we have to just do this better than the bar stool people? Like, where now? Well, there is no, like, leftist bar stools. Like, there is no, like, leftist media infrastructure. Like, she can be plugged into this entire right-wing media infrastructure that is very reality TV adjacent, that is very pop culture adjacent, because it exists. Nothing like that exists on the left. We just have, like, gay Twitter. We have Stan Twitter. Yeah, there's Stan Twitter.

Which is left discoded, but we got to plug Hawk Tua into Stan Twitter. I guess that's my job. should have co-opted her before the Republicans. Fuck. Yeah, you're right. She should have been on a pride float. Mac Cosmetics, we need to tap Hawk Tua for the Viva Glam campaign. This could all be prevented. Yeah, if there's anything I've taken from this,

it's that we need to find Hawk Tua's newly hired PR team and get her on video saying trans rights. I do think it'll be interesting to see, like, you were saying, like she does have this charisma. And I do think even just it seems like she's friendly with, you know, Brianna from the bar, like from Plan Bree. And it seems like I could see her being on a reality show. I don't know that she needs her own reality show, but I could see her going on something. I don't know.

I will say with the amount of people we've seen, she does definitely seem hungry for something in her career. And like, like we said earlier, like I'm rooting for that. But something that you and I talk about all the time is the level. of success we've seen people find in that venture on explicitly right-wing media. And so I guess I'm just really hoping that that doesn't happen to her. Don't get red-pilled. Hawk to a girl. Hawk to a girl. If you're out there and listening to the Bit Fruitie podcast, please don't get red-pilled. Say gay rights. Taylor, thank you so much for being here today. Thank you for, sorry, I need to think before I speak. I love your brat nails. Thank you so much.

are so spiky. I think you posted them somewhere and I was like, oh my God. I know I'm ripping holes in my sheets. It's bad. Taylor, thank you so much for once again joining us on the show. It is always such a pleasure to talk to you about the internet. Where can people find more of you, support your work, hear more of your hot takes about the internet? Subscribe to my YouTube channel, please.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, I have a podcast called Power User. It's like an online culture podcast. You talk about all this and more. If you have made it this far, then I hope you enjoyed today's episode. We went a little more lighthearted today. There's so much shit in the world. And frankly, I just wanted to do an episode about the Hawk to a Girl.

And I found that there was enough of a political reason to do so where it made sense for this podcast. So I hope you enjoyed. Once again, if you'd like more of the show, you can subscribe to the Patreon. I'd love to have you over there. And in place of my usual sign-off, which is stay fruity. I'm just going to say, I love you. I will see you next time. And until then, spit on that thing.

It was good, right? It was great.