Let’s cut to the chase: Hawk tuah, the meme currently tearing up the internet, is a reference to a classic bedroom method where a willing partner spits on an erect penis before—or during—fellatio to increase the total lubrication. The verbiage here is intended to replicate the onomatopoeic ricochet effect of coughing up a loogie. Read it slowly: hawk tuah. Get it?
You are justified in wondering why this is trending. Well, in June, a pretty 21-year-old named Hailey Welch was flagged down by a pair of Instagram hustlers who go by Tim & Dee. The pair specialize in a brand of R-rated woman-on-the-street interviews, which have become quite the popular format on social media. Welch, who was clearly a few shooters deep and having a good time, was asked about what she does in bed to make a man “go crazy every time.” Welch responded that she opts for a good old-fashioned “hawk tuah.” “You gotta spit on that thang,” she added.
For reasons that are eldritch and unknowable, Welch’s interview clip went massively viral. She was christened the “hawk tuah girl,” with her mythically profane sex tip being remixed over and over again across TikTok, Instagram, and the platform formerly known as Twitter. (For instance, TikTok user Armando Vasquez uploaded a video captioned with, “When people ask my wife, ‘how do you get him to buy you so much jewelry?’ ” The answer? Hawk tuah.)
Welch has since turned into a burgeoning social media star. She made her formal debut into public society with an appearance on a Barstool podcast hosted by alpha influencer Bri LaPaglia—called, you guessed it, PlanBri—where Welch revealed some more biographical information. (Apparently she was working in a bed spring factory? People’s lives, man.) Welch also cameoed on stage at a Zach Bryan show, and Tuesday, news broke that she had signed with an agent to further nurture her burgeoning influencer career. (I can only assume that the first episode of the Hawkcast is right around the corner.)
So yes, Hailey Welch is savoring her brief notoriety, which was meted out through a distinctly circa-2024 channel. Here’s the strange thing, though. For some reason, hawk tuah is being coded as a slyly conservative slogan. Reporter Reese Gorman noticed a few Donald Trump supporters in Virginia donning shirts that read “SPIT ON THAT THANG” below a Shepard Fairey–ish image of the former president. (“Are they saying that Trump gives sloppy toppy?” wrote one confused poster.) Another frequent Trump booster on X added that Welch “fundamentally expressed conservative values,” and she’s also been a hit in the New York Post comment section. But the most illustrative vector in Welch’s right-wing brand overhaul, as pointed out in journalist Max Read’s newsletter on the phenomenon, was when a golf fan shouted “hawk tuah” after Bryson Dechambeau—renowned for his huge drives and dogmatic MAGA boosting—teed off at a recent LIV Golf event. The meme has officially left containment. Nothing means anything anymore.
Welch herself has kept her politics to herself, but thus far, her media appearances have been marked with a frat boy MAGA texture. Once you find yourself mired in the Barstool junket, it is tough to leave. Maybe that’s because Trump and the rest of his political project have worked so hard to enshrine a fuck-your-feelings attitude toward personal conduct that even the mildest of taboos—like, say, the endorsement of a lubrication tactic—is embraced by MAGA-dom. (Consider the “Dicks Out for Harambe” slogan, an ironic salutation to a slain gorilla that, inexplicably, became a pro-Trump dog whistle among the alpha wave of the alt-right in 2017.)
But again, Welch’s actual electoral leanings remain a mystery. This became a mild fracas within hard-right media this week when veteran conspiratorialist Laura Loomer tweeted that Welch disavowed Trump during her interview with LaPaglia. (In fact, Welch had only said she wouldn’t give the hawk tuah treatment to the former president, not that she wouldn’t vote for him.)
I am not a political scientist, but I don’t think there is a better way to symbolize the branding problem that is currently sinking the Democrats to oblivion than the fact that a viral blow job moment has been immediately codified by the right. This is beyond ironic, as the Trump platform is set to wage an unprecedented war on American sexual freedom. Contraception rights are under siege, abortion access has been curtailed dramatically in many states, state houses are attempting to scrub all pornographic material off the web, and major activists in the party are rallying against what they define as “recreational sex.” And yet, despite the deeply unseemly and massively unpopular puritanical streak hamstringing the Republican Party, a woman like Welch is almost reflexively ushered into the movement. It doesn’t make sense.
Max Read, in his newsletter, theorized that Welch has been indoctrinated into something he refers to as the “Zynternet”—referring to the nicotine pouch brand that has become wildly popular, and inexplicably MAGA-coded, in and around SEC frat houses. Read’s point is there exists a massive undercurrent of Americans who have been shoveled under a nonspecific Republican banner despite the fact that their only interfacing with the internet—and therefore, politics—comes in the form of sports gambling, LIV Golf tournaments, and the sort of podcasts that are eager to interview the hawk tuah girl, without a whiff of social justice consciousness in sight. “While the Zynternet is broadly conservative, it’s never quite as committed, partisan, or ideological as some of its adjacent networks would like,” wrote Read.
This rhymes with a recent segment on The Ezra Klein Show, where he asserted that the ideological divide in America has less to do with party polarization and is far more related to the fact that Trump, consistently, is winning huge swaths of Americans who don’t follow any political news whatsoever. The numbers are stark. According to a poll by NBC, Trump is winning the non-political-news-consuming demographic by 26 points.
All of this has skewed the optics about what it means to be political in 2024. If you’re a member of the Zynternet—which is to say, you do not advertise precise ideological stances, your Instagram stories are not constantly paneled with causes you care about, and you tend to wield the internet for the pursuit of pleasure and nothing else—then you will be perceived to be right wing. And frankly, that is not a sustainable electoral model. The Democrat experience should not be a gantlet of soul-crushing fury and anxiety. The party must make room for people who enjoy life and all of its beautiful frivolities, which—if we’re being brutally honest—is the default setting all of humanity should be aspiring toward. We shall all come together at the DNC, hand in hand, and spit on that thang.