'Hawk Tuah' Takes Long Island

Haliey Welch was catapulted out of her small town in Tennessee to sudden fame by making the internet laugh. It's been pretty great, if it weren't for all the creeps.

- Brock Colyar

“WHERE’S HAWK TUAH?” squeals a boy straddling his bicycle outside a sports bar called the Ugly Duckling in Long Beach, Long Island. He’s got a buzz cut and three friends with him, and they say they’re in the eighth grade, though they seem younger to me. They’re begging the bouncer to let them inside because they want to meet the most famous woman on the internet this summer, Haliey Welch. “She’s not getting here till past your bedtime,” says the bouncer, ignoring the encouragement of a grown-up walking by: “Don’t ruin the boys’ dreams!” ¶ Welch, a.k.a. “Hawk Tuah,” went viral for being authentically, hilariously herself. In June, some man-on-the-street influencers approached her on Broadway—not in Times Square but the honky-tonk tourist zone in Nashville—asking her to share “a move in bed that makes a man go crazy every time.” Tipsily, on-camera, she told them, “You gotta give it that hawk tuah and spit on that thang! You get me?” she twangs.

The 21-year-old from a town of barely 800 people in Tennessee was not prepared for what happened next. At the time, she was making minimum wage in a factory, had never set foot on an airplane, and didn’t even have an Instagram account. When the TikTok took off—it’s up to 17 million views and counting—an L.A.based manager and Nashville-based publicity team signed her. Already she has 1.8 million followers on Instagram, some of whom are clearly middle-school boys, and merch, including a $30 red-whiteand-blue trucker hat that reads hawk tuah ’24 and a T-shirt with a hawk on it. And now she’s doing paid appearances like this one at the Ugly Duckling.