Fact check: Was Hawk Tuah girl fired from her preschool job?
The hawk tuah girl or "spit on that thing" girl drew more attention this week as a rumor circulated that she had been fired from her job. A Facebook post from an account called the Tippah County Tribune alleged that the social media sensation, real name Hailey Welsh, was forced to resign from a preschool teacher position at something called the Epstein Day School.
The post included a "statement" from the school's director.
"We have kids spitting on each other and everything else since they heard their beloved Miss Hailey say 'spit on that thang' on YouTube. They really look up to her as a role model and imitate the things that she does. We love Hailey but unfortunately we cannot allow this type of behavior from one of our very own faculty members."
Did hawk tuah girl get fired?
Fans concerned that their fervor could have gotten the hawk tuah girl fired will be relieved to learn that the Tippah County Tribune account is satirical, and therefore little to nothing in that post about her was true.
Even if you didn't look at the account's main page to find its tag line reading "Tippah County’s #1 Publication For Satirical Laughs," there are several clues throughout the fake article.
Firstly, it identified hawk tuah girl as "Hailey Wellington," when she has been widely named as Hailey Welsh. Then there was the second half of the "statement" from the fictional school director.
"One positive outcome the kids took from Miss Hailey’s interview is that parents have informed us their kids are 'dusting the cobwebs off everything' in their homes to earn extra allowance money. The parents are happily awestruck of their children’s newfound enthusiasm towards dusting."
A tweet about the rumor even got a community note that poked holes in the story.
The name of the school also may have raised some eyebrows, if one was paying attention. With all of these clues, we can definitively declare that the hawk tuah girl fired rumor is false.
Who is the hawk tuah girl?
If you missed it, the "hawk tuah" or "spit on that thing" girl is from a viral video that spread on Instagram and TikTok and became a breakout meme starting in early June 2024. Street interviewers approached her and a friend with a question about what drives men crazy, and she gave a response that earned her the odd nickname.
"Oh, you gotta give him that ‘hawk tuah’ and spit on that thing," she said.
Welsh's term for the sound one might make when spitting blew up into an overnight sensation. Within days of the video's posting, people were scouring the internet for her identity.
Some sleuths found a now-deleted comment on the original post that named the two women as Chelsea Bradford and Hailey Welch, and this was confirmed when they tracked down Bradford's VSCO account.
Not much else about Welch has been uncovered, including her place of work.
What's the meme?
The hawk tuah girl meme found its primary home on TikTok, where users took a green screen version of her and began to insert it into various situations such as taking a girlfriend home to meet mom. It wasn't long before she was combined with other memes and pop culture phenomenons.
@drinkingtiktoks Hawk tuah #CapCut #Meme #drinkingtiktok ♬ original sound - Drinking TikToks
Just days after the initial video went viral, TikTokers were mixing Welsh's iconic response with the misheard lyrics meme around the 1994 Tim McGraw hit "Indian Outlaw."
The song's lyrics declare him to be "half Cherokee and Choctaw," two Native American tribes that McGraw definitely doesn't belong to. In TikTok videos, people changed this to "half Cherokee and hawk tuah."
@that.boycory I’m an Indian outlaw…. #fyp #country #countrymusic #foryou #countrytok #countrytiktok #timmcgraw #hawktuah #viral #fypツ ♬ original sound - Cory Uram
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