What’s the Deal With ‘Hawk Tuah’ Girl? https://www.thecut.com/article/hawk-tuah-girl-viral-tiktok-video-explained.html
Exposing Cheaters Isn’t Always a Flex https://www.thecut.com/article/man-cheating-on-flight-tiktok.html
There Are No Girls on the Internet. As a production of iHeartRadio and Ungoss Creative, I'm Bridge Todd and this is there are No Girls on the Internet. So, Mike, when we were talking about what I wanted to do for the episode this week, I was thinking like, oh, I think I want to talk about.
The presidential debate.
I'm gonna watch it live to see if anything comes up from.
It, and you actually early on were like, I don't.
Know if that's what you're gonna want to talk about. I don't know if that's what listeners are going to want to hear about.
I don't know if the if the mood.
Is going to want to hear more commentary on that. At the time, I was like, oh, I wonder why this is his position. Now I'm realizing you were one hundred percent correct.
Okay, well I'll take it. Yeah. I mean, by all means we can talk about the presidential debate, but I don't know. There's just so much coverage of it and so many people sharing their opinions about it. You know, your opinions are good and you have great takes on it, but I don't know. It seems like listeners can find that anywhere they you know, if it doesn't really have a whole lot of immediate tanguity relevance, maybe we could talk about something else to give people some options of something else to listen to.
So I am very much avoiding presidential debate coverage. Instead, let's talk about something totally unrelated to take my and possibly you person listening your mind off of it.
So let's talk about other people's mess.
So we have talked on the podcast before about this dynamic where it feels like in our current digital media climate, surveillance is everywhere. Yes, I'm definitely talking about big tech surveillance of what we're all doing online, all of our data, but also individuals keeping tabs on the behavior of others, whether or not they want to or consent to being surveilled in that way. I think social media invites us to build a world off of the behavior of strangers to suit our needs.
All it takes is one little glimpse, one little peak.
Into the lives of a stranger, and suddenly everybody is building a world around what kind of person they think this person is, you know, casting characters, becoming very personally involved or invested, tracking down information, smoothing information about them, and I think that we have a climate that is brought to us by social media where people forget that people are people who deserve privacy, Like just because you said one little thing that happened to go viral, or just because somebody maybe happened to see you possibly maybe cheating on your wife on a plane. Now millions of people are involved in your business and your marriage. We've kind of talked about this on the show before, but we've got a couple of new instances that have come up lately that I think really speak to what I'm describing. I want to talk them and talk through what they might say about our culture. Quick heads up that all of these instances are kind of sexual in nature, So if you're listening with your kids in the car or something, just know that it's not an explicit episode, but we are talking about sexual topics a little bit. So one of the reasons why I'm excited to talk to you about this, Mike, is because I have a pretty good sense of your algorithms and like what kind of things come up on your personal feed and what pockets of the Internet you're in, and what pockets are the Internet. I'm a thousand percent sure you have no idea. So I was gonna ask you, have you ever heard of this? Next person, I already know the answer is no, and I'm excited that the answer is no. But I'll just ask you anyway, even though I know when I say the phrase hawk to you girl, does that mean anything to you?
Uh? It does not. It looks like perhaps it's Hawaiian. It means nothing to me.
Okay.
So the young woman that the Internet has dubbed hawk Girl is Haley Welsh. She's a young woman living in Tennessee and she's walking around one night and she gets stopped for one of those like man on the street interviews, you know where a guy with a camera and a microphone is like putting a phone in your face.
Do you know what I'm talking about?
Yeah? Sure makes free great content.
By the way, if anyone ever approaches you with a microphone and a camera on the street in twenty twenty four, my advice is to run. My advice is to give them the Tanya Harding no comment. I'll get into why exactly that is, but my advice is to not engage.
So it is for a.
Nashville street show called Tim and d TV. It's an interview series where these two guys Tim and d interview like drunk people leaving bars and nightclubs on the street in Nashville and they ask them for like wild and crazy stories. So they ask this young woman, Haley for a sex tip to make men go crazy in bed, and her tip is more or less that you can use spit as lubricant during oral sex. Solid advice. Ten out of ten love that advice. However, when Haley is sort of delivering this tip, she puts her own kind of enthusiastic spin on it. She says, you gotta give them that quak tah' I'm not like giving it the gravi toss that she gives it because it would involve making like deep throat noises. And I think that's if someone's listening to headphones, that's like the grossest thing you can hear, not in like a sex shame you way, but in a it does it sound good in the ears kind of way when you're wearing headphones, So it needs to be seen to be understood if you haven't seen it. But she's essentially giving an enthusiastic portrayal of what it sounds and looks like to hawk up spit from one's throat.
Does that make sense?
You've described it accurately so that I'm able to recreate a picture in my head of this video. I can't say it makes a lot of sense, but yeah, I know what you're saying.
She says that one sentence, I got to give them that hawk tu ya, everybody goes wild, instant virality. They start calling her talk to you girl, basically based on the sound that she made when answering this question.
What's one move in bed that makes a man go crazy?
Every time you get in that hawk?
Dude spit on that night?
There are millions of memes over the last week. The clip goes megaviral. It is referenced by Joe Rogan, Howard Stern, a Phillies baseball team player Bryce Harper. So I am deeply curious as to why this like short moment from a Nashville Street TV show took off.
Globally like it did.
I don't think that we have had a big, true, meaningful like all caps viral moment in a long time. Do you remember back in twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen, you know we're like these, You would have these moments that were very small that would go super viral. Like again, I know you don't remember any of these because we were not in the same pockets of the Internet. You're probably like in a tent camping somewhere. But Damn Daniel back at it again with the White Kicks.
Does that mean anything to you?
Yeah?
Of course, who could forget that classic video?
Well, that was just a video taken in like a high school where this student would film his friend Daniel's outfits and shoes every day. And I guess he had a nice style, but it wasn't anything like I mean, it was nice, but it wasn't anything to write home about, and so he would be like, Damn Daniel beck at it again with the White Kicks.
Went totally viral.
These kids were on the Ellen Show like it was like when I say it was like a huge moment, it was a huge moment. Like I genuinely cannot think of a time more recently where somebody has had this level of instant Internet fame from just one small thing that didn't happen.
In like circa twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen.
I think part of it is because of algorithms and the rise of algorithm feeds. Like, we are much more siloed online these days, and so you know, the kind of thing that I am seeing all over my curated for you page, it's very different than the kind of thing that you, Mike are seeing and you're curated for you feed. Right, Like, we could live in completely different corners of the Internet where never the too shall meet.
Yeah, and I think we might, am I remembering correctly that at least as of a few years ago, there is a small industry of PR media consultants who would create viral videos for you. They like studied the science of making things go viral, and so you know, they would basically like apply a formula to try to make videos go super viral in this way that previously had been somewhat organic.
I would argue that what kind of rose up and took that space that you're describing is the sort of fake viral video. The video that is hired actors playing out a skit for and there's a script that they know what their parts are, and then that video is sold to us the public as the real thing. Right, So when you watch these video on social media where it's like a fight on a plane and you're like, you look at the background and you're like, what plane do you know that uses those LED light strips you can buy off an Amazon? No planes use that. This isn't really a plane, this is a set. I've seen one where it purports to show like a fed up mom telling off a trans teacher to advocate for her kid, and then another video where the woman who was playing the mom is now the teacher and it's like teacher gets cursed out by mom. I would say that what has taken the place of the sort of we can tell you how to go viral industry is the we make fake videos and live to the viewers about what.
They are seeing to go viral. That's like the new thing.
I would say, so so many different people with different types of agendas. Displacing organic viral moments could unite people, or.
At least unite people in distracting them from maybe things happening in national politics that.
They want a little bit of a break from.
Yeah, I mean, that's mean, if there's any common experience twenty twenty four in America that we all could use a goddamn break.
And it reminds me of another kind of viral video of yesteryear, and that was Chewbacca Mom. You're a Star Wars nerd, so you actually might remember Chewbaca mom. Do you remember her?
I'm trying.
There's not much to it.
Basically, she was a woman who bought a Chewbacca Halloween mask and you it's a mask where you open the mouth and it makes a Chewbacca noise. And she puts it on. She's in her car and she just thinks it's the best. She's like just like laughing hysterically at this mask. That's really it. So this video also went superviral. This was May of twenty sixteen, and I often think back to Chewbacca Mom and why that went so viral, And I had to think back to, like, well, what was going on in May of twenty sixteen.
This was when Trump had become the GOP nominee.
It was like Ted Cruz I think, was the last hold out and he dropped out in May of twenty sixteen, until it was like, oh it's Trump. There was a lot happening with racial justice. The officers who killed Freddie Gray and Baltimore were not convicted, and you had the rise of the all right really becoming a thing. This is around the time where people like Milo Yanapolis, who we've talked about on the show before, were coordinating harassment campaigns of women around things like the all women Ghostbusters reboot right and so I remember distinctively that time on the Internet as feeling like not just bad, not just toxic, but like bad bad, Like the vibes were not good. And I think that in these times when everything feels heightened and charged and really difficult online, we will always seize on any little thing that brings us out of that, even for a moment, even if it's silly, to be honest, kind of like what I'm doing right now, like leaning into pop culture viral internet moments to avoid thinking about national politics.
Yeah, I get it.
So let's go back to talk to you girl.
I'm gonna start calling her HT girl because it's a mouthful to say, no pun intended, but appreciated. So girl is really capitalizing on her viral moment, which honestly good for her.
I think that is great and savvy.
There were people saying that she signed a deal with UTA, which is not true. UTA has confirmed they don't have a deal and the works with her there was even a rumor that she had been fired from her job teaching at Epstein Preschool.
That's also not true. That was a parody new.
Site that fooled people online, So no truth to that. She does not have a UTA deal, but she is being managed by Jason Petite, a Marshall County native who has known HT for many years. So he did an interview with Rolling Stone and said that a day or two after the video started going viral, he reached out to her because he was like, Yo, you need to monetize this brand. So they are now making merch with hactwah on it. They've got hats, they've got shirts. My whole thing is like, I'm so curious how they settled on a spelling of this because I've smelled that multiple different ways. I've seen it smelled multiple different ways. I'm curious, like how they decided like, Okay, no, it's gonna be hawk Tuia. It's gonna be spelled this way. That's gonna be the branding.
Yeah, that would have been an interesting discussion, like a you're gonna do hats, they're gonna do bibs, they're gonna do handkerchiefs. Other adult accessories, so many options. They sorted that out in just a couple of days. Huh, that's pretty impressive. Good for her for capitalizing on this. What sounds like she was just drunk on her way home from the bar.
Okay, so this has been viral for less than two weeks. In that time, how much money do you think that she has made on March to date.
Let's say thirty thousand dollars.
Sixty five thousand dollars.
Good for her sell those hats.
That's what I'm saying. And also, by the way, not for nothing, Christmas is coming up.
I'm just saying, but a Tangoti dot com slash hawk twaw for a discount code you can't Actually that doesn't exist.
I just made that up. Let's take a quick break at her back.
So the person who reached out to become her manager and help her with these licensing deals with the hats and the shirts really pointed out that he wanted to make sure that some of the money from this viral moment went back into her pocket, which is why they're doing the merchandising, he told Rolling Stone. Of course, she hasn't gotten a dime from the first viral video that went out. Nobody was asking permission for her to do nothing neither. I just wanted her to get some of the profit from this deal. It does kind of sound like she is getting a percentage of the profits from the merchandising. He declined to share exactly what percentage goes directly to her, but he says that he suggested to her that she trademarked the phrase and that she's talking to a lawyer about it. So again, I am just purely glad that she is getting her coin because as we know, as we've talked about on the show, oftentimes people who are these viral sensations do not see a dime, whereas other people make money from their whatever viral phrase or viral thing they do, and they don't see a dime, especially if they're black. Right, if that is a common thing, where you know, the woman who was sitting in her car and was like eyebrows on fleek didn't see money from that.
That's kind of changed a little bit because.
She's gotten a few like brand deals later on, But in the beginning, everybody was making money off of that except for her. But even though HT is making some money off of this, it doesn't sound like it is all like roses and rainbows. People early on were deeply trying to track her down.
She was docked.
They were finding her social media accounts, which she then deleted, and people were trying to track down where she worked.
She might be a bartender, according to Rolling Stone.
Her manager says Welsh, who did not respond to Rolling Stone's request for an interview, is overwhelmed by the attention, and she has requested that he not share any personal details about her or feature her face on the merchandise. He says, there are some crazy people in the world who have reached out to her. She's probably one of the most well known people in the world at this point, but I don't know if she's embraced it. So to me, that doesn't sound like something that is necessarily the kind of thing that somebody was like looking for welcoming, right, Like maybe when you were drunk you were like, oh, talking to these guys for their street show.
Why not? But like, who could have predicted the way that it would have taken off.
So again, I'm happy that she was able to monetize this, but as this is all happening, The Daily Dot reports that she's kind of been intentionally laying low, going back to a rural community in Tennessee. So I guess my point is is that I'm happy that she's able to make money. But one person being asked a question maybe when they were drunk after a night out, is not expecting this level of scrutiny and attention for sale one sentence about oral sex on camera for this show. And this is why I say, like, if somebody comes up to you with a camera and a mic in twenty twenty four, nothing good can come of it.
Mate. Nor Evans of the news outlet As wrote a.
Piece called hak Tu Yeah Girl and Other Street interview subjects who go viral? What legal rights do they have and the content they appear in? And the answer is really none. She talks about how these videos that sometimes do go viral will feature young people, usually walking around town after.
A night out.
She writes, with a few beers in their blood, they might even say things they regret, especially when they're offhand. Comments begin a conversation online that put a huge spotlight on their life that can feel invasive and overwhelming. And another good point to know about this kind of content is that if you agree to be on a video like this, and then you change your mind about what you said after somebody shoved a camera in your face that when you were drunk leaving a bar, you don't have a ton of recourse, like you likely cannot get that content taken down even if you ask. Ultimately, my biggest issue with these kinds of man on the street videos is that anybody, anybody can get a camera and a mic to do this. Right when we were talking about the college campus protests, you saw young people declining to give interviews, not just to traditional media, but also to just sort of like person with a camera who I have no idea who this person is. A lot of people were kind of chastising these youth, being like, oh, well, how do they expect to get their message out if they're not giving interviews, But actually they were being really smart because if you have not vetted who this person is, they could be literally anybody with any kind of agenda. You have no idea, and so if you are trying to put a curated message out into the world, you should not be talking to a rando just putting a camera in your face.
You don't even know their name.
They could be anybody as mat Nor Evans puts it in her piece, With traditional media, there is an expectation that the interviewer is acting in good faith and when speaking to an ordinary person, to present them in a neutral but respectful light. The street style interviews don't always follow the same principles, and that all is captured in these viral moments.
Yeah, that's such a good point that, you know, people taking part in some sort of interview when they're they've been drinking, or they're out on the street. It is always a risk that anything you say to a camera is going to appear on the Internet and be there forever. And you know, I think it's particularly fraught in the particular context that HT girl got caught in of, you know, at night, out on the street in front of a bunch of bars, it is appropriate to talk with other adults about sexual stuff, but then that same video played on everybody's TikTok algorithm in the middle of the day to like kids at school or like your parents, just people who are not in that context where it's no longer appropriate. Yeah, that's gotta feel really crummy. And I can see how she would feel overwhelmed and wanting to hide from it.
Ultimately, that is like, really my issue with this style of interview. The subject has no idea how it will be used. They have no control over how it will be used, and whatever framing is projected onto it after the facts, they just have no control over that. And I think that by definition, by nature, that is at its heart exploitative, because it's not like ht girl sees any money from the millions of views and all the attention that that channel got from her vulnerable moment. You know, if she wants to capitalize off that, she is sort of forced to do a merchandising deal if she wants to make money from that.
And I think that we.
Should really be thinking about the ways that these viral moments kind of force people into a limelight. I would argue, this is my opinion that like, if you've been drinking and you are caught in one of those moments, you can't.
You can't.
You're not fully consenting to everything that comes next. Sure, she you know, when they put a camera in her face, she answered into the interview, But who could have ever imagined the way it would go viral, the way it would blow up. And so by nature, I feel like it's a little bit exploitative, and we should be talking about that side of viral moments, not just how funny they are, how pop culture zeitgeisty.
They are whatever.
Yeah, and also the people who like dosed her and we're trying to find her job, like why like what if those people did something else with their time?
Yeah, if you go on Twitter, you have all of these people. I think a lot of them are bots, to be honest with you, purporting to be like, oh, I found her only fans, or like, there was video that I believe to be AI generated but don't quote me on that, implying that they have found like uncensored content of her online. It just really speaks to this this cottage industry that is so common in our current digital media climate, where when a woman kind of gets a moment of stardom already, you have people who are like in the woodwork trying to capitalize on that, trying to be like, oh, you know, how can I make a pickfuck? How can I get a little engagement from that too? And I think there's never been an easier time to do that than right now.
Oh that's so interesting. I didn't appreciate that aspect of it, But it makes sense. I was thinking that these were like moral skulls who were trying to sex shame her, but it actually makes more sense that it's like bots and scams.
It's bots and scams, like bots and scams twenty twenty four. Don't give your credit card information to anybody. Somebody puts her cam on your face, pull your hoody up.
And walk away. Just stay inside, Just stay inside.
So all of this leads me to a semi related but not actually related incident, and I'm calling that the ESPN ice cream incident. This one is actually really simple. Two women go to a baseball game. They eat ice cream cones. That's really it.
Story over, end of sentence period.
Well not exactly, because ESPN decided to do a twenty second segment that is just a close up of these two young women eating ice cream, and they obviously don't know they're.
Being filmed like this.
They don't they like that it's obvious that they don't know that it's like a zooming in on their face and on their mouths as they eat this ice cream with commentary. The commentators are doing play by play commentary of their ice cream looking the commentator is like, oh, yeah, you gotta lick that liquid before it melts the whole thing.
I mean, I don't want to pile on, but you get the drift.
The video is published a TikTok and it honestly does not take a genius to imagine what kind of comments people are leaving on this video of two young women eating ice cream. TikTok users start comparing the two young women to h t Girl, including one named Corey Cadell, who goes by airboats of Oklahoma saying I think hawk twas about to get replaced. His video saying that got over two hundred thousand views before he deleted his account because one of the women in the video actually called him out on TikTok. So one of the women who was videoed eating ice cream at this baseball game spoke up on TikTok. She said it was just a twenty second segment of just eating ice cream or licking our ice cream, And he said, twenty seconds dedicated with commentary to just us eating our ice cream. We all knew what direction that video was going to head it and lo and behold, the creeps of TikTok got ahold of it. Because we woke up getting compared to the hawk twag girl, which no shade to her.
Girl do whatever.
So I want to double click on that because I don't think that she's trying to shame HT girl for her viral moment, but just saying, like, what did her viral moment had to do with me? I have nothing to do with that other than I ate, other than like, I'm a woman existing in public as well, and so yeah, I think it's important that none of this is to sex.
Shame HT Girl, who actually gave very good oral sex advice. But the whole thing.
Is just kind of gross, and I think it confirms that women are considered fair game to have our behavior scrutinized, surveiled and sexualized, even if we are not doing anything inherently sexual. Yes, HT Girl decided to chime in for that interview about oral sex, but even then, I don't think it means that people should be able to comb through her social media for her personal information and like try to find out where she.
Works and all of that.
And the women at the baseball game, we're just eating ice cream. Their only association with HT girl is that they were all young women in public but that is all it takes for somebody to decide that you are fair game to be sexualized, even if you don't want to be so. Annie, one of the women who was eating ice cream on ESPN, said, it is beyond evidence that women are not welcome in the sports world. We just wanted to enjoy a baseball game and it was one hundred degrees, so God forbid, be some ice cream. It's like, we can't just sit and eat our food in peace. And I really feel for Annie because she says that at first she was kind of excited to be to have this on camera moment because she's getting texts from her friends who were like, hey, we see you on TV.
But then she.
Says, but what's not a fun thing is to get text messages from other friends of disgusting people making tiktoks about you. There are so many comments just like this one talking about ESPN does this every year. They always pan it on a woman doing it. And it's true because what is fun You're than a woman? Licking an ice cream cone or eating a hot dog are something that can be overtly sexualized. And I think that she's right that it really is about a deeper hostility to women in spaces that are traditionally considered as like male dominated. It reminds me of this other instance. It happened a few years ago where I think it was a sorority.
So it was a group of.
Young women at a baseball game and there was a moment where they all had their phones up and they were all taking selfies of themselves, like posing, doing little selfies whatever. There was a video that like zoomed in on them, and the commentator was making it seem like these girls were really vapid. He was like, Oh, look at these girls, like trying to get the perfect self blah blah blah. Really I think leaning on some negative misogynistic tropes about women.
Right.
What he didn't say is that at the stadium, that moment actually was a selfy moment. So like on the JumboTron, it was like, let's have a five second selfie moment, and so the JumboTron instructed the entire stadium to spend minute getting selfies, and those women were doing exactly that, and to make it seem like they specifically were doing something that was like vapid just really put this misogynisticchine on them doing totally normal behavior that in fact, the baseball stadium asked them to do. And so I remember these sorority women. They really had an eloquent clap back. They were like, Oh, we were doing exactly what we were instructed to do by the stadium. And if we're so vapid, how come our sorority is actually has this like massive service focus and like we do community service projects all the goddamn time. So like this negative attitude that the commentators had projected on it, they really did a great job is exposing, like, yeah, it's just misogyny. It's just hostility to women in male dominated spaces. Like if I am not here to be sexually titillating you by my public presence in this space, I am here to be your punching bag for whatever misogynistic tropes you feel like throwing out this day.
So I don't go to a ton of supporting events.
But apparently when you were sitting behind the dugout, like these two young women eating ice cream on ESPN were, there was always like a higher potential for being on camera, but it was a very different thing.
Like being zoomed in on while licking an.
Ice cream cone the site Awful Announcing, which I did not know that that a media entity existed to critical analysis of sports announcing, but I'm glad it exists. They also pointed out something which is that they say also bizarre was the fact that the same broadcast briefly focused on a woman eating a lollipop less than twenty minutes after the ice cream incident. ESPN switched off the woman eating a lollipop after about three seconds, but not before the camera intentionally put her in focus.
Weird.
I'm sorry, that's.
Weird, right, Yeah, I mean I feel like whoever was directing the videography that day really had something on their mind.
I mean, you come to watch a baseball game and it turns into a who's licking?
What? A thon?
Yeah? Seriously, I feel like you or I don't remember if you were quoting Annie, really nailed it by you know, it's just an opportunity for casual misogyny and sexualization, which I guess in the repertoire of this videographer maybe lots of sports people who are, like, you know, directing where the camera goes to. I feel like they're always looking for something interesting to put on screen. Like oh, a cute baby, or like a guy eating a messy hot dog or a guy dancing or something. And it's unfortunate that casual misogyny and non consensual sexualization are in that same mix of like fun tropes to put on the JumboTron.
Yes, yes, well said.
More after a quick break, get right back into it.
And again the way that some of the people, not the announcers, because the announcers were not the ones comparing her to HT girl, but the way that commentators on TikTok, like that guy who deleted his account after being called out by one of these young women, The way that they engage in this sexual fantasy world building, right, using this twenty second video of women doing something totally humdrum to build out this sexualized fantasy world around these women what they might be like sexually based on like a twenty second clip of them mining their business.
You know, it's all world building.
Yeah, and we might really go out of our way to be super generous to ESPN and the people who made this choice to put those women on there on the screen, Like maybe twenty years ago that would have hit one way, like still not great, but maybe not like the worst thing. But in this new cond that we live in where something like that is going to end up on the Internet, and even the most subtle, non overt wink to sexualization once it gets on the Internet is fodder for this sexual fantasy world building that you're describing and opens the people up to a level of scrutiny that far exceeds what might have been possible, you know, twenty years ago during a television broadcast of a game.
This is kind of unrelated, but that's actually how creeps circumvent AI guardrails to create sexualized, non consensual deep thinks. So when those AI deep fix of Taylor Swift, which depicted her at a sporting event, when those were going viral, the way that creeps generated them, because you can't just go onto an AI image generator and say, like, show me a depiction of a famous person doing a sex act. What they did was they said, like, show me an image of Taylor Swift eating a hot dog or eating an ice cream, doing something that would look kind of sexual if you doctored it. And then and so they were getting those images that would depict an image of Taylor Swift doing something a certain kind of way you know what I'm saying, and then edit those images to make them look more sexual. So it's interesting to me how whether or not it's using AI or it's just like this is an image of a woman eating a hot dog or an ice cream. Creeps are going to do some sexual world building around that regardless. And that world bringing really brings me to the last instance that I want to talk about, which happened on a plane. So a woman on TikTok named Caroline Renette posted a TikTok of a man talking to a woman with the caption if this man is your husband flying at United Airlines flight twenty one to forty from Houston to New York, He's probably going to be staying with Katie tonight.
She says.
This man met a woman at the airport bar, convinced her to change seats with somebody else on the plane so they could spend the flight drinking together. Apparently they were going on and on talking about his job. His eight year old daughter. Renette says, I wouldn't have known this man married had he not been marrying his wedding ring.
Do your thing.
TikTok pashtag by the wife less than twenty four hours goes by Internet flutes got everybody, They got the man, they got the woman. Everybody involved has been identified. They tagged the woman's TikTok account, posted details about when the guy's plane landed, shared photos of the couple, their family, and other people were actually suggesting that they do the same for the woman, Katie, who allegedly was the woman this guy was talking to. So I gotta say this. I saw a lot of people cheering this whole thing on, right, But I think we got to keep it real about content like this. I don't think that the people who make this kind of content are just trying to be like girls girls giving a girl a heads up, you know, out of the goodness of their heart. Maybe that's a little bit of a part of it, but let us be real. These people are making content. They are trying to get engagement. This is something that is tailor made to get people buzzing and engaged in with that online. That is what they are seeking. They are inviting strangers into the dramas and the real lives of other people completely uninvited. These people are not characters in some fan fiction. They are actual human beings who have jobs, and kids and communities. It would be one thing if Reneed had tried to find this woman and like DMD her, but inviting the entire internet millions of strangers into it is a totally different thing.
The cut put it really.
Well, they write, Renette's video makes certain assumptions that plain guy is in a monogamous marriage, that his wife would be grateful to see his behavior publicly exposed, and that such a transgression warrant strangers posting her personal information online. But at a time when ethical non monogamy and polyamory are on the rise, not every fort with a wedding rings crossing a line. We don't know what rules a plain guy and his abide by on their personal lives. Besides, if Rened really cared about this woman's well being, why not track her down and send her a private DM Instead? The video strips of plain Guy's wife of any agency, reducing her to a homogram onto which people can project their own baggage. While an online sisterhood has formed around the wife, it's unclear whether she wants that camaraderie. She hasn't recorded her own video expressing gratitude toward Reneed and the Internet slouths or responding to any of the comments who have tagged her. Instead, she's been silent, her TikTok account set to private.
Yeah, what a terrible experience for her. I totally agree with that this is way out of line.
And I think it comes down to people like projecting themselves into this situation. And I think because this particular situation involves morality, cheating, and sex, it makes it easier for people to weigh in on I guess, or juicier for people to weigh in.
I guess I should say yes.
And you know that piece from the cut noted that it reduces the agency of the wife to like a non actor. She has no agency in this story. So this whole narrative is also building on misogyny and the idea of her as like a dutiful wife left at home while her cheating husband is out living it up in the world. It just really smacks of those same tropes and I think requires them exactly.
And you know, I have been cheated on myself. I know that it's a charged space, to say the least. And I think that what we're seeing is a lot of people projecting their own feelings and their own situations.
On the people that they've ever met.
And again, that is that flattens out this wife into just something to hang your projections onto.
And she's a human being, not to mention a fucking stranger.
She would probably prefer to not be the subject of national discourse about how her husband is cheating on her.
Oh.
Absolutely, And you know, there were a lot of comments on TikTok being like, oh, I wish that when my partner was cheating, that somebody had done this for me kind of thinking, is that do you really wish that?
Do you really wish.
That millions and millions of people would know every aspect of your of your personal business with your husband, not to mention your job, your boss, your coworkers, your family and all have an opinion on it, Like, really think about what you're saying. Is that actually what you wish somebody would do? Probably not right?
Yeah, And do you want to have a conversation with your eight year old daughter about it.
When somebody brings it up to her at school like, oh, because people were digging into their families, so it's like, oh, I saw a picture of you and your dad on TikTok. Herd's cheating on your mom on a plane, Like, is that really? Is that really what you wishould happen?
Probably not.
Yeah, And like you mentioned, this has nothing to do with Rennet, the woman who made the video trying to genuinely help out the woman who is allegedly being cheated on, and it's just all about her getting clicked for herself.
Yeah, I mean, I think it's possible there is some aspect of her that is like I hate cheaters, blah blah blah. But I think that we gotta be real that we're not like this idea that it is a digital sisterhood. I just really reject that. I don't think that that is what's really going on here. You know, it really doesn't sit right with me because, you know what, my sister wouldn't do. My sister probably wouldn't publicly blow up my life in a way that now everybody, my whole community and a bunch of strangers now get to have an opinion on it.
It reminds me of in a corporate office when you're sitting down for like an all staff meeting and the CEO is going on and on about how we're all a family, and it's like we're not a family. People get fired from this company all the time, like and that's fine, it's a workplace, but it's not a family. This idea of a digital sisterhood feels very much like that, where like, oh, we're all sisters here unless you screw up, and then you're gonna be on like the outs, the receiving end of all this negative attention because actually it's not about solidarity or sisterly feelings at all.
Well, I would actually argue that it's not about sisterly feelings and it's really about individual come upance.
And like, I think that.
I've seen a lot of people who have gotten involved in this narrative. They are at once the sluts who have like assigned characters out of these strangers that they don't even know, and then they have projected this jilted wife story onto this situation while also kind of recasting themselves as the jilted wife.
So I think it's a lot of people who are like I have been cheated on.
It sucks, I want to kind of get my vengeance by playing that out in the lives of these strangers. And it really reminded me of this research paper that came out in twenty twenty called TikTok and the Algorithmized Self, where the researchers basically argue that TikTok is unique from other social media platforms because it is less about connecting with a network of friends and more a site built on quote a public performance heavily built on interpersonal engagement while creating content for an algorithm. And so essentially it's this like big digital sandbox that invites make belief. They write, the unplanned back and forth motion between creators makes the app an incredible social playground. TikTok users play and perform in simulated characters and setting. The video app is an escape from reality. So basically all of these people are using these strangers and their lives to play out little dramas that they also get to be very invested in. And I think it's even juicier because who doesn't like getting to be the morality police around it? To get to like really moralize and scrutinize and judge.
The behavior of people you don't even know.
Everybody loves that, Like, it's the that's like the basis of so much on the Internet, And so I understand why it's kind of irresistible, but also people need to understand that this is real people's lives that they're dealing with, people who don't even know.
Yeah, wouldn't it be nice if people could just like the privacy of consenting adults.
Wouldn't it be nice?
So the whole situation reminded me of this phenomenon that we've talked about on the podcast before that. Doctor Jenna Drinton, Associate Professor of Marketing in the Quinlan School of Business at Loyal University Chicago who studies social media behavior, dubbed the TikTok tabloid, in which we are all players and characters in a tabloid magazine. Because of TikTok, she writes, users collectively manufacture and dramatized stories like an investigative gossip reel. Traditional tabloids place the lurid limelight on celebrities and public figures, but the TikTok tabloids target everyday people, you know. Doctor Denton points out how all of these devices like oh, we're having a Part two and having going to be cliphangers, all of this is sort of these dangling of tantalizing bits of stories where it really invites the listener or the watcher to like continue to give their engagement and to follow along and get involved. And of course, the more of this content that we consume, the more we are training algorithm.
That is the kind of content that we want to see and engage with. You know.
It's this constant cycle that I really deeply.
Think we need to be moving away from.
And to me, it all comes down to consent, right Like, HT girl might have volunteered to have that moment on the street, But first of all, was she sober? Because I feel like you can't really consent to something if you're drinking. Could she even fully consent to what actually ended up happening with it blowing up the way that it did. You know, I'm curious to hear other folks' opinions about that, but I would argue no, you know, by buying a ticket behind the dugout at a baseball game and then eating an ice cream cone, these women on ESPN did not consent to getting a flood of sexualized messages on social media, you know. And the woman whose husband was taking a flight talking to another woman on that fight certainly did not consent to having strangers publicly invite themselves into her marriage. And you know, the Internet has connected us in new ways that we never dreamed possible.
But I will die on.
The till maybe we all should be okay with just knowing a little bit less about each other. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or just want to say hi? You can reach us at Hello at tangodi dot com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tenggody dot com. There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by me Bridget Tod. It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tarry Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Almado is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate and.
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