The ‘Hawk Tuah’ girl revealed in an interview that she is so afraid of being kidnapped that she has hired security guards to protect her when she leaves the house.
Fifteen minutes of fame aren’t all they’re cracked up to be, as Hailey Welch, now dubbed the ‘Hawk Tuah’ girl, has discovered. Her rise to internet stardom came from a Nashville street interview where she went viral for giving out sex tips.
In an interview with KIIS FM’s The Kyle and Jackie O Show, she revealed to listeners that things are a lot harder for her now than before she went viral.
The 23-year-old shared with the radio hosts that while she wasn’t fired from her fictional pre-school job like one satirical Facebook group purported, it isn’t easy for her to do something as simple as walking out the front door anymore, as she’s afraid of what people will do, down to even kidnapping fears.
She said, “I’m paranoid of getting kidnapped or something. I’m very paranoid about that. And I’m little, too, so I can’t really defend myself with big people or nothing like that.”
The ‘Hawk Tuah’ girl rose to viral stardom after Tim & Dee TV stopped her and a friend on the street for a street interview, a style of interview where folks, often social media content creators these days, will ask random and weird questions of people going about their days on the street. In the case of Tim & Dee TV, the interviewer chose to ask rather NSFW questions.
He asked her to name a “move in bed [that] makes a man go crazy every time?”
“Oh, you gotta give him that hawk tuah and spit on that thang,” she told them, and her viral video was born.
The ‘Hawk Tuah’ girl revealed that even something like going out to the store is a fraught situation for her, as men proposition her and sexualize her to her face.
Welch told the story of one such incident on the radio show, saying, “I had a guy come up to me in Walmart a few weeks ago, and he was like, ‘I know you.’ And I said, ‘No you don’t,’ and he like, ‘Yeah I do, I know you.’”
“And I was like, ‘Oh no, you don’t,’ and I got my bag and went to walk away, and he’s like, ‘I know you, Mrs Hawk.’”
The in-person harassment is nothing compared to the amount she faces online, where one fan offered to pay $600 for her spit in a jar, and another asked for photos of her toes, of all things.
“So, the guy that does my hats, he got offered $600 three days ago for me to spit in a jar and sell it. That is revolting! That is just disgusting, is it not?” Welch said in her radio interview.
There are always those thow cling to any kind of fame, and Welch said there are plenty of people who pretend to be her online as well.
She said, “It’s kind of creepy seeing your face on another account that don’t belong to you.”
Hopefully, the viral stardom will die down and Hailey will be able to walk around safe from harassment again soon.
Sign up to receive the Daily Dot’s Internet Insider newsletter for urgent news from the frontline of online.
The post ‘Hawk Tuah’ girl says she’s now ‘paranoid of being kidnapped’ after viral fame appeared first on The Daily Dot.
