What Hawk Tuah Girl tells us about who gets famous on the internet

Few pivot from meme fame to a management deal so why did it happen to Haliey Welch?

Hawk Tuah Girl (left) in the video that made her a meme and *maybe* a future internet superstar

There’s a very specific type of internet fame that occurs when a person is filmed saying something memorable. The expression becomes social media’s favourite catchphrase for at least a week and it inspires a gazillion memes. Remember Damn Daniel, What Are Those? and Back Up Terry? All three are now classics but I bet you’ve forgotten the people at the centre of them.

That type of flash-in-the pan fame happens ever more frequently as the lifespan of memes and internet obsessions shortens. And because of that I thought that Hawk Tuah Girl, the 21-year-old who’s blown up after giving an on-street interview, would follow a similar path. Boy was I wrong.

Hawk Tuah Girl, whose real name is Haliey Welch, looks set to outlast the burst of interest in her viral moment. And the reasons why tell us a lot about how the internet works in 2024. Before we get into that let me explain why we are talking abo…