Rising to fame for her shocking and crude humor in 2024, TikTok’s overnight sensation Hailey Welch, more commonly referred to by her catchphrase as “the hawk-tuah girl”, took her popularity by its horns.
Recognized solely for her viral interview and internet-famous phrase in which she originated her popularity from, Welch took it upon herself to combat the criticism of internet dwellers deeming her a one hit wonder.
In doing so, Welch crafted her own little nest in the internet, beginning a podcast capitalizing off of her viral saying: the “Talk Tuah” comedy podcast, insisting in the show’s description that she was “ready to show the world that she’s much more than a 30 second clip, and she’s here to stay.”
For a while, Welch effectively maintained appearances across various social media platforms, determined to build off of the opportunity that she was given.
However, Welch’s situation took a turn for the worse in December of 2024 when word of the “Hawk Tuah coin” launched.
Appealing to a certain audience with her infamously risque presentation, Welch made the decision to expand her empire with the introduction of something called a memecoin, essentially a form of Crypto-currency.
The idea that came to fruition so hastily crashed just as fast, and chaos soon entailed for all involved in the coin.
Welch faced immense backlash for her encouragement in investing in the coin, promising great results and ultimately falling short of delivering those promises.
As of a little over a month later, the Hawk Tuah coin is trading at rates around $0.0001901, at not even one cent, and Welch has ghosted the internet in its entirety.
Though the outcome of the coin’s unsuccessful launch is tragic for each investor who lost money, it poses the question of who is truly to blame.
In my opinion, there is a specific audience that overlaps and indulges in both Welch’s content and investing in memecoins, and that is younger males.
Not to say that these investors are unintelligent for their decision to partake in the coin’s launch, but expecting to profit hundreds, if not thousands of dollars off of a woman who has been involved in the public spotlight for less than a year is unrealistic and undeniably the fault of the investor.
After all, each person who indulges in operations such as memecoin, Crypto, or the stock market should understand that it is essentially gambling wrapped up in a classier ribbon.
There is no promise of profit and no promise of loss, and the only person who can be held responsible for their money is the investor themselves.
Although Welch did advertise her coin as something monumentally beneficial, it is the job of an investor to surpass illusionment and maintain a factual perspective on how their investments may actually perform.
And I’m sure every person has heard the forewarning not to trust everything you see on the internet, so why is Welch to blame for the ignorance of her investors, so much so that the backlash thrown ran her off of the web entirely?
To summarize my point into one simple hypothesis, the concept of a viral trend is harmless as long as the trend follower is comprehensive of their own personal boundaries and limits. The harm entails when the trend’s followers blur the lines of a trustworthy and experienced mentor versus a parasocial relationship with a micro-influencer.
All in all, the catastrophe of Hawk Tuah coin should not be entirely blamed on Hailey Welch, but rather blamed on the error of judgement in those who were quick to jump onto a cryptocurrency trend solely based on the fact that it was a trend.
Being removed from the herd mindset and seeing the effects of carelessness as an individual can be hard to come to terms with, but it is in no way a reason to try and cast the blame onto another person and avoid responsibility entirely.
If this situation brings one thing, hopefully it can reiterate the importance of the age-old question that everyone’s mother has asked at some point, “if all your friends jumped off of a cliff, would you?”