In part two of our deep dive into Haliey Welch, aka Hawk Tuah Girl, Jamie looks at the media blitz Haliey was sent on after her viral moment and securing management. Without the Ellen Industrial Complex to reel her in, we dig into the world of vaguely conservative video podcasts, and how all roads lead to sports gambling scams.
Cool Zone Media.
Welcome back to sixteenth Minute, the podcast where we take a look at the internet's characters of the day and see what their moment says about us and the Internet. And today we are continuing our deep dive on Hailey Welch aka the Hawk to a Girl. When we left off last week, Hailey Welch had just decided to go public as Miss Hawktua on July one, twenty twenty four, abruptly solving a mystery that sleuths across the Internet had been trying to figure out for weeks, either to identify who she was for fun or claim slash profit from her words and image when she wasn't claiming it for herself. And keep in mind, the original Hawk was posted June eleventh, and three weeks later, there had already been several rounds of discourse surrounding Haley. It wasn't until she introduced herself to the public that the details of her biography began to walk in place. This is how I've been able to put it together as best I can. Hailey Welch was raised by her grandmother or her granny in Belfast, Tennessee, population eight hundred and forty four. Around the time since she was nine months old. Some basic stats about Belfast, Tennessee. Its majority working class and comprised of non high school grads. There are two men to every woman. It is overwhelmingly white, and has a limited job market. It's also farmland. Most early footage of Haley features animals in the background, and if you can't see them, you can usually hear them. Hailey's parents had a limited presence in her life. Her dad, a farm hand, was in the picture, but infrequently. She says she rarely spent time with him growing up. Her mother was a drug addict from the time Haley was born and has never been in the picture in her life, something that Haley became gradually more open about as her fame continued to grow. And by that I mean it is not at all unusual they hear Haley making crack baby jokes at her own expense. Here's an example from Whitney Cummings podcast.
Twenty one.
Oh how's your mom?
Mamma a crackhead?
You don't want her?
Is she an actual crackhout? Yea, I'm a crag baby, are you daw?
Why you guys so funny? Hailey is a high school graduate with a close knit group of childhood friends. She was a cheerleader in high school, and at age twenty one, was working at a spring factory called Tennessee Spring and Metal as an inspector and shipping manager who often had to wake up at two thirty in the morning to get to work on time. She has a tattoo saying still I Rise, a quote that references both Amaya Angelou Pome and, according to Haley, a lot of the difficulties she faced growing up and transcending them anyways. The second episode of Talk to a really emphasizes the rural normality of her lifestyle, complete with her drinking wine on the porch with her friends.
I'm always down for Taco Bell.
You are Maha freeze.
I've never had one.
They're good.
We're taking your Baha virginity.
And going to Taco Bell habitually, which in my opinion, is always a sign of good character. Another thing that struck me is that Haley seems to have a vested interest in lifting up her friends from Tennessee in the process of going through this chaotic experience, particularly Chelsea Bradford, who appeared in the original Tim and D TV video with Haley and initially convinced Haley to do it at all. Chelsea was a friend who would later stand up for her a number of times and would eventually become her talk to a co host and essentially right hand woman. And the reason that most people hadn't put any of this together and assigned false narratives to proliferate that was that Haley wasn't even on social media at the time the clip went viral. This is from her first interview on podcast Plan Pree Uncut amazing. But did you delete all of your social media?
Okay?
So I deleted all my social media like six months ago due to like personal reasons.
I never really got on it or anything like that.
Oh okay, So it didn't have anything to do with this.
Oh no, I was long gone before that.
You were already gone from social media. And everyone thought that you deleted your social media because you were like scared of all of this blowing up.
But you were gone.
I've been gone from it.
So are you going to come back? I think we're working on that right now. As she's consistently alluded to, Hailey was mortified when the Hawk to a clip went viral and didn't do anything except go to work for the week after she first noticed its virality. She pretty cleanly breaks down the emotions she was navigating at this time during this interview on Plan Bree with Brianna LaPaglia of Barstools.
It was just massive.
It was massive, okay, war close through your head.
When that, I was like, oh, well, this.
Is kind of fun.
I was like, it's not gonna get bigger than this. And I go back like an hour later in the views done went up by like a milia and I was like, oh my god, there's no way that just happened.
Sure, up it did.
And then it kept going and kept going, and then there was the search for you. Yeah, and what like, what did you want to do when there was a search? Was there a part of you that was like, I don't want to be known as the hook to a girl?
Yeah, there was a big part of it. And then they started spilling my name wrong and making like accounts of me, which they got pictures off all my friends like social media's and stuff like that, and which it's it's kind of creepy, stay in your face on another account that don't belong to You're like.
Yeah, people thought any of words, Jillian.
I saw a bunch of people were getting like recognized as you, but it wasn't you.
It was wild.
So when they officially found you, were you like I want to dive into this or I want to take a step back.
I was like, oh shit, I'm not adding these people back.
LaPaglia also acknowledges another wave of media surrounding Haley prior to her siding to lean into her fifteen minutes of fame.
What do you do now, because now you have management and I have a team, what are your plans moving forward?
Like do you want to.
Still be the hook to a girl or do you wanna like.
I don't really want that to be like my image, yeah, like hot to a girl. I just I don't say that being like yeah, I don't want to be none of that.
Yeah.
So it's kind of a surface exploration of how this shift went for Hailey. But the idea that Haley voluntarily wanted to leave social media six months ago and now is returning to it just to reclaim and ideally profit from this moment more or less happened because of something that was outside of her control. For everyone that I've seen jumped at the conclusion that Haley was determined to be famous. I don't see any evidence that that was the case. Thinking of the girls and women whose lives were damaged or demolished by appearances on Girl's Gone Wild, I don't see it even more. But on Plan Brie, Chelsea Bradford appears briefly as well, and offers a little insight in her ability to consent to the on the street interview From her perspective.
Did you say anything that you wish you didn't know?
Which, I wasn't prepared for those kind of questions, so I don't think anybody was, like I wasn't in the right mind, but I knew what I was saying, you know.
Yeah, I made sure to keep it.
Like because it was going to go out there. Yeah, and you were just like fuck it.
I just said, I don't give a fuck.
So, like I was.
Saying before, what do you think she should do now?
Like, do you think she should just take full advantage of it?
Oh?
Absolutely, Yeah.
I love her personality and the fact that the world gets to see it and they obviously love it too, so I think she should.
And that accent, the accent is so good.
Again, like we talked about last week. I think two things need to be true here. There's not much doubt at this point in early July that Healy has decided to lean into this fame and see what might become of it. And that's pretty common for main characters in her age range early twenties who don't have long standing careers or families of their own to consider. But I think it's also fair to say that this was not something she was necessarily courting prior to this moment. So what now? During her first interview, here is what Haley thinks is next.
So now is like, you're gonna go to La, You're gonna go to New York.
Oh yeah.
Do you think you see yourself like starting your own type of like show or podcasts or you're just gonna be like an internet personality.
I think we're gonna do like a show and then we're just gonna be like on a bunch of podcasts and everything else in between.
Cool.
So kind of just figuring out as you go.
Oh yeah, there's more to come, don't worry.
And at the end of her interview with LaPaglia, we get the first hint of exactly how politicized Haley is going to be as a figure when LaPaglia asks if Haley would if Haley would hawk on that thing of various prominent people leading to the inevitable Donald Trump.
No, absolutely not, uh huh for me, Jake Paul, I'm happy to say hawk hawk Yeah.
You said, okay.
Thankfully. This happened in twenty twenty four, a moment where the media had finally recognized that when someone gets this famous this fast, they really need to think about how they're going to frame her. I'm just kidding. Here's part two of Haley Welton the hawk to with saga. Welcome back to the show. Let's play the theme song.
It's time sixteen let's see.
Welcome back to sixteenth minute, the podcast where we take a look at the Internet's main characters of the day, talk to them and see what their moment meant for them and what it says about us and the Internet. My name is Jamie Loftus. And while I'm recording this from the past, I'm assuming President Trump's second inauguration was even scarier. And while I dissociate with you for an hour or so, let's continue to examine the saga of hawk to a girl Ailey Welch, after her first formal media appearance with Brianna LaPaglia aka Brianna Chicken Fry no time to explain, she was further politicized by saying that she was not interested in hawktuaing on Donald Trump's penis, and I mean, god forbid, these two twenty one year old girls immediately knew they didn't want to slobber on the dick of a nearly eighty year old man. And off of this very normal question came a very normal media response. On the right, we have Laura Lumer, the degenerate Hawk Tour girl's real name is Haley Welsh's anti Trump. Then Laura Lumer later that day.
I stand corrected at Bill Ackman. Upon further review, it turns out that she was only talking about whether she performed fellatio on President Trump, and.
In the center, an embarrassing Twitter account called Biden's win the Hawk.
To a girl just absolutely demolished Donald Trump, saying it's a no go for her retweet to make sure all Americans no gen z is speaking out against Donald Trump and his radical agenda and.
In the words of a normal Instagram commenter.
Stop mimifying politics. It's not whimsical or cute. America is facing a horrifying reality, and articles like this trivialize it.
This feels like it happened five thousand years ago. But while all of this was happening, Haley's team put her to work, mostly making appearances. At first, she memorably met Shaq, who is the king of the random endorsements.
Ebsine ego teenk comes with so much ink you can print up the five thousand pages?
Can your printer do that?
This coming as a former attendee of the Shaktoberfest Haunted House in Long Beach, California, but Haley met him at a bar in Nashville while he, for some reason did a DJ set. Hailey's publicist, who also represents Bruce Springsteen, seems to have taken a pretty classic approach with making her image. He got Hailey meure as many mainstream figures and outlets as possible, as quickly as possible, in an attempt to build credibility in the space that Hailey seemed to be interested and well suited in video chat podcasting, and while she was nearly immediately asked if she would give Donald Trump a blowjob, Haley and company tried to mitigate this kind of politicization in the days and weeks to come, as Haley was brought on stage at the Zach Bryan Concerts and flown out to judge a bikini contest in Fort Lauderdale, telling Rolling Stone in her first national interview on July eleventh that the attention had been really overwhelming for her as someone whose biggest fear was getting kidnapped. She covertly addresses this kind of politicization in the inner saying when asked about the upcoming twenty twenty four election.
I don't want to be in the middle of it. Whoever you want to be president, that's your business. What's my opinion to you? And I was talking about looks wise, Donald Trump. I'm sure you're a nice man, but you won't getting the hawk for me. He's old enough to be my granddaddy.
Okay, let's put a pin in that. In this same Rolling Stone interview, Hailey emphasizes wanting to do something positive with the fame she'd gotten from her meme. This kind of reminds me of Ken Bone, and she wanted to depoliticize her own image. Also kind of reminds me of ken Bone. And to be clear, these two people do not have a lot in common, but it does seem to be kind of the plight of the election your main character, Remember ken Bone went viral in twenty sixteen. At an election event, Hailey told Rolling Stone.
Maybe this was like God's gift to me or something. She says, everything that's going to come from this, it's going to be something good.
The Beast also notes that Hailey was consistently surrounded by her new manager and publicist, along with Chelsea and a videographer. It's clear that she wanted familiar and newly trusted people around her to advise on this barrage of attention. The Penthouse team's motto for Haley was said to be protect the Hawk from the vultures.
Well, bther this guy.
Stakes two desires seem to be locked in from the beginning. She wants to start a podcast or do something else in comedy, and she wants to help animals. And by the time the Rolling Stone article was released, Hailey had in fact released her own merch and had reportedly already made over sixty five thousand dollars in addition to thirty thousand dollars for an appearance she would make on Long Island, so she had at this point reclaimed her image. The question was in an industry she was completely unfamiliar with. Who could she trust to help shape this image. We'll get back to that, but I just want to single out the name of her merch site, sixteen minutes dot Life. I have more examples down the line, but this is a repeated trend that makes it seem like Haley and her team wanted the podcast title to this exact show too bad, So sorry, hope you enjoyed this episode. A few days later, she made this aforementioned Long Island appearance at a bar called the Ugly Duckling, as chronicled in a piece in The Cut that featured some of the most needlessly classiest writing I've read in a while. What the writer is correct to point out, I think, is that this was a bar swarmed with mostly white Republican supporters of all ages, from kids trying to fake their way in to meet the woman of the moment to grown men in one of the many unlicensed Hawketua t shirts with Trump's face on them, reading truly nasty slogans like if she don't hawk tua, don't talk to a as well as a literal Donald Trump impersonator. Why the writer goes out of their way to call the bar shitty, the people smelly and tubby and drinking Miller lite as a naive attempt to fit in is anyone's guess. Don't get me wrong, this event sounded extremely unpleasant, and the writer is not wrong to point out how this exemplified Hailey's early and immediate Republican voter appeal. When she arrives, Haley is said to be oggled over and swarmed by adult right wing men, and while she's enthusiastic and polite taking photos in a yellow dress, one of her management team members leans over to the writer from the cut, saying, I have.
A newfound appreciation for how creepy man can be. But she's taking it like a champ. She's a girl.
She is a girl. Interesting observation anyways. A few days later, Hailey confirmed that men throwing themselves at her in this desperate, creepy way both made her uncomfortable and was her new normal, along with the almost to be expected requests for feet picks and an only fans launch, neither of which she had ever indicated an interest in. She said that she didn't even know how this appearance had come together, only that it was a part of her management's plan to get her a podcast deal, and when asked about the very trumpy nature of the event, Hailey said she didn't want to get a picture with the Trump impersonator and did not want to discuss her personal politics, explaining.
I don't know much about politics. I don't talk about things that I don't know.
And in regards to the creepy men.
I'm there for the women. I'd sit there all day and talk to the women. And as summer twenty twenty four continued, Haley's management seemed to find where her podcasting niche was going to lie. It's a weirdly difficult space to identify, and the closest I've found is something that writer Max Reid calls the Zinternet, something he explains is the expanded universe of not just men, but content generally marketed towards young to middle aged men that if you trace the latter up high enough, always comes back to someone's shitty, scammy sports betting app.
He describes the Internet, I think pretty perfectly like this.
You could probably communicate the basic contours of this community simply by calling it frat Internet or or stool Internet or dumbass parlay bet Internet, or internet made up of guys who sent annoying winey replies to AOC or whoever, and when you click on their profiles, it's like thousands of retweets of stories about the LSU football program.
Ridiculously specific, maybe, but it's huge. This space has become pretty big in the last ten years. Read speculates in part because of Elon Musk taking over Twitter, and because sports gambling has been legalized in so many places in the US, and when they became legalized, they needed to build media to get young people addicted to gambling. I even have a personal anecdote from this. When I worked at the Boston Globe when I first got out of college, my editor left to go work as quote unquote the editor of DraftKings, which at the time sounded ridiculous. The other reporters and I thought he was a dumb ass, because why would you leave a legacy newspaper to develop hashtag content for a sports betting app. Well, we are all podcasters and substackers now, and he is a millionaire. So shout out Corey. If you listen to my recent series on the mana sphere. This corner of media isn't that precisely, but it is very adjacent, and it's this area of the Internet that Hailey Welch kind of fits in seamlessly with something that becomes clear in the series of shows she's featured on in the next two months before she eventually launches her own podcast, the famous Talk to Us.
I just played Better Pigs, hit some two thousand XS lineups and have a ton of fun winning money. Download Better and Play Better. If you want to win two thousand times your money.
Download Better, Play Better picks, Hello.
Them, Welcome back to Talk to I got Miss Chelsea and then Mark youban.
But before that there was her appearance on Whitney Cummings Show where we get pull quotes like this.
I remember thinking this is so unfair.
People should be able to go out and have a couple of drinks and have fun and not get famous overnight for it.
But have it thrown on the internet.
Are you close to having a house a month later?
I could, yeah, probably next month, I'd say I could.
Probably buy a house.
I think one of the coolest things about you becoming famous is how hard everyone's rooting for you.
Like the Internet is usually so negative.
It's such a nasty place, and I'm sure you've seen some nasty stuff.
Then that'll always happen.
Though, I love hot dogs until I found out, what's you know?
I love hot dogs?
I love hot dogs.
That is like the most sexual thing you can say by accident.
That is gonna just I almost feel like we have to cut that.
Out and tragically later in this Internet Whitney Cummings Facetimes, Hailey Welch's biggest comedy crush Matt Rife. So Matt Rife, let me see if I can do this in a sentence or two. Matt Rife is a tremendously unfunny stand up comedian who pivoted to strictly misogynist jokes in the last couple of years when he grew insecure that too many women were coming to his shells because they were attracted to him. Whether that's why he chose to get the world's worst cheek implants is anyone's guess. I know, I know, I know body shaming is horrible, but I hope you'll agree that it doesn't count when we're talking about Matt Rife.
But sometimes you get a girl with a big clit and you're like.
God, I.
I've seen I've seen it.
I've seen it.
When I've been in the bedroom with a girl with a massive plant, I'm like, yo, that's pretty close. Yeah, they were supposed to sick you a thumb wrestle.
And while the bread and butter of these zinternet podcasters is built around talking about cancel culture and you can't do that more, Haley never really talks about cancel culture and doesn't really seem to have much interest in airing hot takes on these appearances or even later on her own show. But it's clear that these edgy, often controversial white millionaires are the ones that she's pulled towards. You're Matt Rife's, You're Morgan Wallins. The list, unfortunately goes on, and Hailey's management takes care to pull her image towards sports, even those sports are something that Haley herself regularly admits she knows and cares very little about. But there she is throwing the first pitch at a Mets game on August fifteenth. For some reason, I'm not going to put you through all of these appearances, but one I do need to single out because it is a cultural artifact so baffling that I consider it my patriotic duty to share it with you. Hailey Welch Miss Tua on Bill Maher's podcast.
I'm not up to trans I had to figure out who you were today.
I'm so serious. I don't keep up with anything.
You're twenty one, You're not supposed to. I'd be disappointed if you did your day to day before this happened. Was like working in a where'd you work?
A spring factory?
A spring factory? Right?
It wasn't nothing bad though, It's not like a normal factory. You hear anything about I guess really laid back. I'm doing it there.
Yeah, but it's still a fucking factory. I mean yeah.
I mean they got the bill's pay. That's all it mattered. I didn't mind end up going to work every day.
Which is better that or Now you're in show business, Come.
On show business. You don't know what he Harrelson is? Don't really whatdy Harrelson? That is time? What a ravager?
Now? That's religious. I don't have the time or energy to talk more about Billmar's podcast. I do know what's called Club Random, which sounds like a Little Brother's YouTube channel, But I do kind of love this interview because Haley does not know or care who Bill Maher is, and it seems to be bringing him to the verge of having a nervous attack. The whole interview is basically him quizzing her on World War two and the Beatles while putting this like weird life serum into his sparkling water with a syringe while she drinks a high noon like a normal person. I promise I'm not lying. It's very, very weird. The only good advice mar is capable of giving Hailey is something I noticed happened across media elders who spoke with her. Even when there are people I'm not personally a fan of, there are many people twice or three times per age who gave Haley just pragmatic entertainment advice on how best to not fuck your life up. Here's Bill Maher.
I told you you were given this chip. You were given the chip of fame.
Now you want to trade that in for something that uses that but takes it to the next level, and you have to just like trade on what you're already known for. That's the one thing you're known for, So you could do a podcast for like, I don't know if there's anything from somebody that age with that point of view, but it couldn't be frivolous. You have to take it seriously. Could you do that possibly and talk about sex but seriously serious issues because there are a lot of really serious issues.
And weirdly enough, this also happened on Whitney's podcast with Matt Rife, of all people, and.
They were just asking if I had any kind of advice to somebody who had had similar success in a similar field and platform, and you were the example that brought up, and I basically just said to fucking stick to your guns and have fun and be smart and responsible because as much I'm sure you've already started to see U a little bit, as much as people love you today, more and more people hate you tomorrow. And the more people love you, the more people hate you. Because people love you so people love to see you succeed in the beginning, but then they fucking love to tear you down when they feel like you've gotten too big for your bridges. So my advice that I gave was just for you to be smart and fucking enjoy yourself.
So every once in a while she gets a usable piece of advice, But this doesn't seem to be the path that she's going to go on now to this day, it's unclear to me how much of this plan is of her own volition and how much is being pushed by the management. But I have my suspicions. I'll share this quote from your manager, Johnny Forster, when he was asked if he thought Haley would ever try to get Hollywood representation.
She doesn't even really know what that means. No disrespect to.
That, okay. By mid to late summer, Hailey had an Instagram audience of over a million people, which makes it interesting when she starts a Twitter or account sometime later in the summer, mainly because sorry, I mean, I'm still on there too, But Hailey's generation is not particularly interested in Twitter. She literally calls it x no. From what I can gather, Hailey started her ex account because she was encouraged to at a massive crypto conference she was attending as a celebrity guest last summer. Now it's unclear exactly how this crypto appearance came together, but it appears the culprit may be Howie Mandel.
One million dollars is a top prize. No crazy stunts, no trivia questions. All they have to do is be able to answer the most important question tonight. And that question is real or no Deal?
Like that Howie Mandel, host of Deal or No Deal, Voice of the Maguai Gizmo, Howie Mandel.
Has it got a named that?
Yeah?
Mog why?
What mag Why? I don't know some Chinese word. I just call him gizmo? These ags you like it?
And then my friend got me onto a movie. I did this movie called Gremlin Gizmo. Yes, the first little but it's the same voice, he goes.
It's the same.
Stay with me. Hailey Welch appeared on Howie Mandel's podcast called Howie Mandel Does Stuff where she plays this JOKEI game where she learns about her ancestry in a bad ripoff of a much better show on PBS called Finding Your Roots for Hollow People.
You should keep that.
Yeah, I don't trust anybody. It's not just Hollywood people, it's just anybody.
Why what happened? I just don't did something happen? I just don't trust anybo.
Can Let's ask management, can she hock to you into the haktua, into the tube away from the microphone?
And I can't prove that this isn't a coincidence. But Hailey Welch later links up with Howie Mandel's son in law, Alex Larsen Schultz aka Doc Hollywood, who is technically a musician, but for the sake of this sentence, is absolutely a crypto guy. This brings us to July twenty fourth, when Doc Hollywood posts a photo of himself. Let's see description, White guy of indeterminate age, presumably bald, black rimmed glasses, black T shirt you can tell cost over one hundred dollars for some reason, black brim hat and he's pointing at Hailey Welch and Chelsea Bradford while reading Matt Fury books behind him, saying that meme class is in session and in case you're not terminally online, Matt Fury's work is a reference to the fact that he created the cartoon Frog Pepe, who the right wing and the crypto lobby have pretty successful stolen as a symbol of their own. So, while it's unclear whether Don Hollywood introduced Haley Welch to Howie Mandel or the reverse. If I told you Howie Mandel's son in law was a prominent villain in this saga, would you believe me? Because that is the world that I'm asking you to live in. Because once Dock Hollywood pops up, as a very thorough timeline from the Ringers, Katie Baker details, Haley becomes a peculiar fixture in the blockchain community, a place known for crypto scams, crypto being something that Haley has also suspiciously never demonstrated an interest in before. Haley becomes a soft fixture in both the crypto and the sports gambling space, mainly because the two are connected via a lot of sketchy gambling, including a cursed encounter where she met RFK at the Bitcoin twenty twenty four conference in late July at some event called Karate Combat. Sure, And it's around this same time that she starts an x account. And while her personality remains somewhat consistent across her social media channels, I do need to note that the content on Haley's X account is markedly different from what you'd find on her Instagram or her Snapchat. Instagram and Snapchat for Haley tend to be more general influencer lifestylely things, her sharing her personality in a fairly direct way, but her ex personality is marketed to the crypto AI general chaos tech bro Her early tweets, I am absolutely certain from when I began researching this series are from early July twenty twenty four, but appear to have been since deleted and are impossible to access via the wayback machine, something I suspect has something to do with an eventual crypto lawsuit. But I do feel very confident in saying that Haley's first posts on X are a series of videos and pictures from a Nashville bitcoin expo where she agrees to start an X account at the event. At present, Hailey's first tweet that's publicly available is from August seventh, but you'll have to take my word for the fact that that is not true. Regardless, the Hailey presented on X isn't just a relatable girl from Nashville. She's a crypto capitalist with a Southern twang, a very different version of herself, to the point that she'd occasionally have to remind people that she was running the account herself, posting front facing videos as evidence it's me, bitch, What are you fucking mean?
Hey? Come bractillya mes.
Me bitches, But most of her here are either promo for her eventual podcast on fellow cryptobro Jake Paul's sports betting company platform, or ugly AI generated images of her onto tech bro meme formats in no particular order, Hailey as an astronaut, Hailey as the statue of liberty, Hailey surfing holding a beer in an American flag while wearing a tuxedo, and her spin on existing meme formats like the Drake one, waving away traditional news sources then smiling and pointing at X. She's using dumb catchphrases like grocktua. This account is clearly courting the Elon Musk lobby on Elon Musk's platform specifically, and while this alternate Hailey persona builds on X, she and her management continue to introduce her to the corner of the hyper successful, ultimately kind of bigoted and boring video podcast world Whitney Cummings, Bill Maher and so on, then on Instagram over on her more normal persona. On August twenty eighth, Hailey launches the one initiative It seems like she actually would have cared about three months earlier a nonprofit called Pause Across America.
Today, I'm happy to announce a launch of My Paws Across America fun. Our mission is to bring awareness, advocacy, and financial assistance to animal charities within the United States. I'm starting in my hometown shelter and it went a little something like this sprit pickout and we're gonna getting some supplies. So the first thing on my list is Lacy's and callers.
She calls this initiative her life's mission, and I honestly believe her. Her love of her friends, family, and pets are the only ostensible consistence across this story. Now, it as for what the nonprofit does, very hard to say. Their URL is registered under Haley's LLC sixteen minutes, and we know she reportedly donated a half a million dollars of her own money and partnered with the Community Foundation of Tennessee to get the nonprofits started. But what we don't know is how much this charity made or what they really did. But they are accepting donations to this day. Don't donate there, but at the time the nonprofit was announced, Haley said.
Ever since my life churned so publicly, I realized there had to be a reason for it, said Haley Walsh. Growing up, the one constant in my life was my pets, and they helped me get through so much. By starting Haley Walsh's pause across America, my new found financial blessings will be shared with the animals that need it most.
And at the time this got Haley a fair amount of goodwill. Here she is acknowledging that her fame materialized out of kind of nowhere, as much of the media surrounding her had indicated, and that she wanted to do something productive with it. The management machine that she had brought on to protect and expand her influence continued to work behind the scenes. The next day, Haley's ex account was back posting memes, this time with Haley's face on a crypto coin, and three days later, she and Chelsea are at the Celebrity Poker Tournament, which, to no one's surprise, was her first poker game, and she appeared to have no previous interest in it. In my opinion, clearly the management has a mission here, but before we can get there, Yes, It's time to talk Talk to whose trailer launched on September two, twenty twenty four.
She's literally doing anything to stay round.
Does anyone actually give a fuck about her? Why are we keeping this goal relevant?
Your fifteen minutes are up?
Your joke was funny for two days. Stop y'all really thought I was done.
I'm just getting.
Started, baby.
Incidentally, all of the clips of podcast conversations that follow in this trailer are never actually aired, as is referenced on the podcast months later by Jake Paul himself. It appears that the entire first round of interviews conducted were never aired due to being weird, stilted, or combative on the part of the guests, meaning Jake Paul. In the trailer, the conversations are with z internet appealing guests talking to Haley outside with a campfire, while the eventual show happens in a more conventional studio setting with the obligatory fluorescent sign that says talk to U. But even if none of this footage ever ends up airing, the trailer effectively teases the idea of the podcast it appears on Jake Paul's network. It features real conversations with the coolest guests, and it teases what becomes a running, if uninteresting question throughout the show's run. Who is hooky? I'll spoil that for you, poog. The key is Hailey's on again, off again boyfriend, who is a seemingly nice plumber from her hometown named Kelby. He's around her age. She seems fine. But don't let this deter you from the podcast message, which is essentially who's booking?
He might stop that too, Subscribe it that day.
The announcement for the podcast in the Hollywood Reporter read as follows.
Welch is set to host the podcast Talk Toua as part of the Better Banner, with the first episode debuting September tenth on social, digital and audio platforms. The weekly podcast will see Welch showcasing her comedic style and Southern charm through a blend of interviews, lively discussions, and humorous moments.
So if you listen to the sixteenth minute Manisphere series, this might sound a little familiar. The just having Funny Conversations formula is very similar to all the most successful right leaning podcasts that populate the man of Spere every day. But at this point, Hailey was a mainstream figure, so most reactions to the announcement of Talk to were either tongue in cheek finally, or the more boring, lamenting that the podcast signified the end of the world, as every Haley Welch news development seemed to tease out. At the time, the audience was barstool conservatives. But as I said in our first part, I still firmly believe that I am the only person who have ever truly watched every single episode of Talk to A But before we delve into my psychosis, what's more interesting than the actual content of the podcast is the way that Haley and her management go in terms of aligning her with Jake Paul, the one, the only, the unfortunate. More on that motherfucker when we come back. Welcome back to sixteenth minute, and we are at a critical point in Hailey Welch's social media career where she puts her trust in one of the worst men on the planet and his brother, who is a close second. You can really put either brother in either position. Logan and Jake Paul are an entity unto themselves, but the brothers became famous online when they were even younger than Haley, blowing up on vine in the mid twenty ten's in Ohio. They started posting regularly when Logan was twelve and Jake was ten. Here's Logan's first YouTube video, Can I Have a Drink?
The What's that called?
Again?
Already obnoxious, but the Paul brothers have run the gamut of what internets access can look like pretty cleanly, straddling second generation Internet pre COVID to remind you of what that playbook was like. This was all about moving to La, becoming daily vloggers and prank YouTubers, and being at the very front of the hype house trend.
Back up.
Wow, I never thought I would say this, Well, welcome home Jake Powler's We Made It mob We Flipped Made It. Good morning, Jake Polish, what flippant go change? Today is off to a flipping amazing start. We're moving into the new Team ten house. We already got the flipping car part in the driveway. I mean, come on, it's official.
Maybe still the most famous high posts to this day. Jake Paul's Team ten was omnipotent online in the mid to late twenty tens, but for the brothers, tasering two dead rats and getting demonetized on YouTube later, as well as both having terrible, botched rap careers that were mostly just plugs for merch. Here's one of Logan's worst and I heard.
You from the North, but I'm from Ohio.
Christmas round the corner.
Get your merch thinking biou you Marrie, Yeah boy, I'm the maty.
Why you freely zart.
The brothers found that they had to continue pivoting because they were getting canceled intermittently for truly horrific stuff. At age twenty three, older than Haley Welch is right now and well into his internet fame, Logan Paul famously made content in the quote unquote Japanese suicide forest for clickbait, hosting videos of recently deceased bodies while joking and making YouTube thumbnail face about it. Not only is this truly disgusting, but keep in mind that the audience for the Paul Brothers at the time were overwhelmingly children, and by extension, this put Logan Paul at the forefront of the disingenuous YouTube apology format. I've made a severe and continuous lapse in my judgment and I don't expect to be forgiven. I'm simply here to apologize, but Jake and Logan persisted cleanly into Web three point zero, the post COVID era, defined by long, meandering YouTube podcast with conspiracy theorists pivoting to boxing, an NFT scam called crypto Zoo that, from what I can tell, sold NFTs of zoo, animal stock images, military defense startups, abandoning their pet pigs, going full Trump, and donating five figures to his twenty twenty four fundraising efforts, interviewing Trump and solidifying the Paul's place in the New manisphere of late twenty twenty four.
Give a fight, you brother, not in real life.
You've practiced a little bit.
Never We've never even sparred, but I was willing to step in from Mike Tyson when Tyson got sick, and we actually ran it up the chain in that foot.
It's hard for brothers to fight, though, well.
Me and Jake decided we both come from a place of love.
That was Logan and in Jake's case, pertinently to this story, a sports betting app called Better, which eventually brought on some podcasts to basically promote the app. And that's thankfully all you need to know about the Paul Brothers for the purposes of this show, but keep in mind what the Paul Brothers have in common with Haley Welch. They became famous at random online, but they, unlike her, are made of teflon. The more they're canceled, the further right and audience they court, which is pretty normal practice at this point. But I do think the fact that their men makes it a lot easier for them to keep bouncing back, because white guys are the people we're conditioned to give redemption. Arcs two and I know a lot of that sounded vague and didn't attribute things to one brother or the other, but to be honest, I'm not paid enough to tell them apart. But having done all this stuff and still remaining successful enough for the recent Jake Paul versus Mike Tyson, a convicted rapist Netflix boxing match, to become one of the most successful stream sports events ever, it's bleak. The Polls have found a lot of success doing whatever the most annoying profitable thing to do is in any given online moment, and as much as I hate to hand it to them, they've pioneered a lot of annoying scammy trends over the last decade, and it's the younger Paul Jake, who founded the Better app and bravely fought that convicted rapist two and a half times his age on the world's largest streaming platform, who ends up seeing an opportunity in Haley Welch enter talk to A. But it almost wasn't called talk to A. Check this out.
So it's a really good name for the podcast. I was, I was very right there a girl.
It's really good.
I do.
Look a few different ones like what else do you? Was you get me?
And then there was this one. What was the other one? Sweet tea sixteen minutes, A little smarter, it's like.
But you might remember. People were frustrated to see Haley expand her influence, some because she was trying to capitalize on the attention, and in my case, because aligning yourself with the Paul Brothers is a bad sign. Not a surprising call, to be clear, because the appearances that Haley had made thus far fell somewhere between center libertarian right. So people freaked out about cancel culture and making dick jokes as a full time job well into their forties. But what's interesting is that many of these appearances and early guests are pretty even split of people who are either ten or more years older than Haley is or people currently employed by Barstool Sports, so it is clear what media group she's falling into, and it's a lucrative group of people. And while some of them are mainstream names, most are niche popular or got their start on the Internet and seem to have been chosen to pull in a wider audience for Hayley, from younger guests like Jojo Siwa and country singer Dasha to high profile comedians like Hannah Burner and Whitney Cummings to more popular, center to conservative podcast hosts like Brooks Schofield, Caitlin Bristow and Breonna Chicken fry De, Teke Adjason Bros. And business bros like Jake Paul Whiz Khalifa and I'm not kidding Mark Hubin. That man will talk to fucking anyone. So as the talk to a historian du jour, I'm convinced what happens on this show that's worth discussing because most of the comments on the YouTube releases of the podcast, which peak at two point seven million views on the debut episode and reach their low at around a quarter million views, as well as charting on conventional podcast charts. Most commenters don't appear to be watching the show.
I'm a forty one year old surgeon mid operation. I got an important message that the Talk toua podcast was released. I dropped everything and rushed home immediately. Thank you for saving my life.
Talk Tua currently fighting on the frontlines in Ukraine and everyone has called truce to watch episode one of the Talk Tua podcast. Amen.
I was in the middle of driving a school bus full of kids on the highway when I got this notification. I jumped out of the bus, causing a nineteen cop pile up, just to run home and watch this podcast. Thank you, missus, Talktua. You are truly inspiration.
So what happens when you do listen to the show. Here's a short tour In episode one with Whitney Cummings, we learned that the podcast is being recorded in la as well as are introduced to the people who Haley is surrounded by more or less constantly. There is, of course Chelsea, who serves as a coh who they cut to every once in a while. Also her manager Jamie, who seems like a real piece of work and seemingly a publicist from time to time. During episode one, Haley talks about how she recently has taken her first flank ever from Nashville to LA and holds her own pretty well, although Whitney Cummings is pretty generous and encouraging about making sure the conversation keeps moving, and there's a bone chilling pattern established for this first time host, the transition from being a spirited conversation with other people who a dead eyed reading of an ad for Jake Paul's shitty sports betting app but.
Like, so that's something that is such a breath of fresh air about you. It is you know, I agree.
So I'm gonna be real with y'all. I was never the biggest football fan. I honestly don't even get the rules that much. But what I do know is I like Kevin fun and winning money and better picks. Lets you went up to a thousand times your money.
These interruptions get increasingly weird as the show continues, but the only other thing really worth mentioning here is that Whitney Cummings gives Hayle the following misleading reassurance at the end of her appearance.
So, no, I'm proud of the people you've surrounded yourself with, because that makes or breaks you mentally, financially says everything.
So you have amazing taste in humans.
Whoops. Pass forward to episode three with Caitlin Bristow, where Haley shares the following terrifying prophetic dream.
So, I actually had a dream about Matt Rife a few weeks ago, and it like traumatized me a little bit. This man he come out, He's like, just give me a minute, you know, I'll be right back.
I was like, oh, okay.
He comes back and he's like looking at me off of weirds. I was like, okay, I need to get away from him. I start running from him and hide in this closet and there's a bunch of dead girls in this closet and I get in it.
He still killed, you.
Know, I'm like, what the fuck?
He opens the door and finds me, and I like dart in between his legs and run out and then I'm in a cornfield somehow, and then he runs out with an axe and starts like cutting on my ankle.
Oh my god. Episode four, Haley's asked by guest Dasha about her mental health whatever.
Sometimes yeah, okay, if you read like some main shit like on an off day, you're like, damn.
Yeah, what if they're right?
Yeah?
Episode five, Haley acknowledges her fucked up in traumatic childhood. You had like a crazy childhood.
I had a very fucked up childhood.
Really?
Yeah, damn, I'm a granny baby. Was that like like my granny raised me?
Oh wait, same as my girlfriend?
Episode seven, the five million teaser of who is Pooky turns into yet another sports gambling ad.
All right, child big Announcement's time for their revel And now I'm not talking about Pooky, and I'm talking about the best offer for this NBA season. In honor of basketball being bat all new and existing users will get a deposit match on better picks.
Now Chelsea is in the ads as well, but she doesn't really say anything. She just stares vacantly into the middle distance. And it's around this part of the show where guests will regularly quiz Haley on things she doesn't know, making her look charmingly uninformed for not knowing who figure like Plato and Socrates are. For all of its silliness, it's pretty dull, but as talked to a chugs along. Haley reaches a few more benchmarks of cultural relevance, including the classic weird ASNL reference, come to.
Me, today's celebrity contestants, We've got the viral sensation of the summer, the somehow famous for one sentence, Hailey.
Welch huh tooy spit on that side?
That's the one yep in late September, and she made more inroads with the conservative tech community by joining Kick in early October, Kick being the streaming platform where most people go after they've been kicked off of Twitch for saying a slur. On Kick, she live streams her appearance at a gamer conference. Gaily also makes repeated attempts on X to meet Michael Saylor, a bitcoin billionaire who, of course has been to court for tax fraud. On X, she repeatedly tries to saddle up to eat La Musk, hosting a number of AI photoshops as that scary Tesla robot, as well as advocating to free Ross Ulbricht, who's currently serving a life sentence for running the darknet monolith Silk Road. While Haley never advocates for Trump explicitly, the way she's saddled up to mostly his supporters, gives you an idea of the audience she's interested in. On October ninth, mister Beast, a tremendously successful YouTuber who recently got engaged to try to distract from his ongoing reputation troubles, rented out an entire movie theater to watch Talk Tua on the big screen, captioning it as follows.
Pov you rent a theater to watch Talk Tua, listen to the thick of It by KSI, and eat Lunchley, which.
In case you have a life, is a canceled YouTuber named mister Beast watching a crypto fraud flash in the Pan Influencer's podcast Haley Welch while listening to rapper Slash Logan Paul's best friend Slash co business owner ks I while eating Lunchly. Lunchley is, or maybe it was at this point I just checked is a lunchables competitor founded by Ksi, Logan, Paul and mister Beast that famously has a lot of disgusting mold in it. Anyways, nice plug for talk to by mister Beast. Of course, the reason mister Beast did that was synergy Lunchley is a Paul endeavor and Hailey is an employee of the Paul family, and that synergy goes both ways. Once the Jake Paul versus Mike Tyson fight is announced on Netflix, Haley and Chelsea constantly joke about it, mentioned that they're attending, encourage others to watch, and jokingly pretend to be rooting for convicted rapist Mike Tyson. We have to keep moving. Episode nine, released a week before the twenty twenty four election. This ad appears, Chelsea, us, what what is it this time?
Did you know you can bet on the election.
Like you can bet on who's going to be president.
Yeah, it's this new app called Koushi.
No way, I gotta see this for myself.
Oh my gosh, you can bet on different events too.
No way, I've got to see it for myself. Episode ten, Jake Paul appears ahead of his dumb ass Netflix fight and goes full Trump.
Then there still be the hate of oh, fight someone your own age, because people are brain dead, actually, and they don't look at the actual facts, which is probably why a lot of people are voting for Kamala Harris. But it's a sad world out there.
In this episode, Hayley's boyfriend Pooky aka Kelby, is revealed and immediately starts doing a sports gambling ad with her.
Pooky, I got a surprise for you.
Nothing you do surprises me anymore.
Game times hooking us up. We're gonna be able to get some good tickets here. You pick pick your top three and then I'll pick out of those.
Can it be a game a concert?
I can choose anything?
Yeah?
And speaking of Pooky, the day after he appears on Talk Toua, Hailey and her team launch her first and possibly her last, app, called Pooky Tools. Why Not I've downloaded the app, but refused to pay to use it, although most reviews indicate that while it markets itself as a dating app, it mainly seems to be an AI tool that tells you how tall someone is when you point your phone at it, and much like the podcast, it's unclear if anyone has ever actually used Pooky Tools, because all of the reviews on the app store seemed to be jokes, such as where do I begin?
This app has absolutely ruined my life. I can't believe Hailey Welch, the creator of Talk Tua, would do this to me I now have a court here for domestic violence charges against me and drunk driving, which both didn't happen. I thought this app would help me get all the huzz but I did not. I am very disappointed Hailey Welch, but I do love talk to him.
Don't worry. The jokes become increasingly sexually violent as you scroll. Episode eleven is whiz Khalifa promoting his bespoke weed brand. Episode twelve is Mark Cuban, who both talks to Chelsea and Pooky about how Haley takes massive shits and more interestingly explicitly warrens Haley Welch not to go into crypto. Check out this transition in this episode. I kind of love it.
Man.
It's rough out.
Here, It is really rough out here. But I have no found respect for you.
Hailey.
Thank you, right, thank you the win.
Do you do anything with crypto?
I do a lot with crypto?
Actually, Okay, let's hear the rest of the clip.
Oh yeah, and can I give you some Yeah?
I'll you Okay, are you sure you're gonna watch? I don't know.
I'm not a big a fan about meme coins. I love crypto, but but you could make some money from it.
There's no doubt about it, no doubt about it.
So a weird, cautious endorsement where a Cuban is basically like, yeah, meme coins are a scam, but you could make money off of it, sure enough. And on the final episode of Talk to A Thus Far, episode twelve titled How Not to Get Canceled, released on December third. It's not a great episode, but it might be the final episode of Talk to A we ever get because it was released just one day before Haley Welch's meme coin dropped and very possibly vaporized her career altogether. Talk to A falls so a crypto scam can emerge, and that's next time on our final part of the hawk Tuit trilogy on sixteenth Minute. Sixteenth Minute is a production of Pool Zone Media and iHeart Radio. It is written, posted, and produced by me Jamie Rostis. Our executive producers are Sophie Lickterman and Robert Evans leamasing Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor.
Our theme song.
Is by Sad thirteen. Voice acting is from Grant Crater and pet Shout outs to our dog producer Anderson My Kat's flea Casper, and by pet Rothbert, who will outlive us all Bye.