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Hawk Tuah: From Harmless Meme to Right Wing Symbol

matt bernstein

413,121 views

I stay away from heterosexual mess, but this time it came to me. Today, Taylor Lorenz and I work backwards to understand how a 21-year-old bed spring factory worker from Tennessee became a culture war symbol because of a drunken joke about spitting on that thang. None of these words are in the bible.

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20 Comments

@Slacked2196 2 years ago Pinned

And straight people say theres no such thing as Straight Pride.

@thunder-san 2 years ago

What's most baffling thing about the "the gays are mad" take is that she'd easily slot into a pre-existing gay icon archetype. Gays love a messy white woman. If she played her cards right she could be the next caulk destroyers.

@whatalsaid 2 years ago

Straight people thinking “hawk Tuah” is edgy, when most of us have been making Cupcakke remixes since 2017.

@iyxon 2 years ago

ok FINALLY a gay person explaining hawk tuah cuz i have not seen it once and the straights are not straight forward at all

@Mallory-Malkovich 2 years ago

She's not gen Z's Dolly Parton.
She's gen Z's Nancy Reagan.

@00PlPu00 2 years ago

Probably the most interesting thing, in a sociological kind of way, is how conservatives are able to "harmonize" their traditional family values, their Christianity and puritanism with a young woman who apparently is not in a relationship and openly talks about bj - the latter is only possible because of progressive wins conservatives openly oppose...

@katepassman 2 years ago

I was so confused by the LGBT+ community supposedly being upset by Hawk Tuah when in actual fact large swathes would probably just be nodding along to her take going "sometimes it do be that way"

@finnhuman3110 2 years ago

The way taylor answers almost every “have you heard of….” question about a bizarre internet thing with an enthusiastic yes and a personal anecdote is hysterical

@danderson8431 2 years ago

The thing is, she said she would NOT Hawk Tuh on tRump. She actually angered MAGA with that statement.

@tomlangford1999 2 years ago

Can't get over how Hawk Tuah sounds like an ancient Egyptian God

@rb6435 2 years ago

I am TERRIFIED of going viral. I am fat, queer, and neurodivergent and I know what the internet would say about me. I carefully curate the stuff I put online with my face or full name attached because I do not want this sort of thing. It seems so easy to get swept up in this and I genuinely fear it.

@randomusername36 2 years ago

As an ostensibly queer person, this is the VERY FIRST time I've heard that we were supposed to be upset about this "taking attention away"

@koroconnell 2 years ago

When Taylor said she wrote the NYT obituary for the double rainbow guy, it actually gave me psychic damage

@christinehottinger5791 2 years ago

Hey Matt, she wasn't waking up at 2 AM because bed spring factories "work that way." She was working third shift (or similar), because most manufacturing occurs 24 hours a day. A lot of younger people do third shift because the sleep disruption is hard on the body.

@just-mees 2 years ago (edited)

It's so hillarious to have Matt be like "hey, random aside but do you remember funny nose frinky from vine?" and to have Taylor be like "Oh, of course, yeah, I knew his mother, I was his midwife, I was there when he was birthed, they made me his godmother, uh huh! I know who you're talking about."

@notNajimi 2 years ago

I’ve literally never heard of this before and I don’t understand how the hell it could be made political?

@onaippiano3491 2 years ago

the one sided hawk tuah beef is giving eminiem trying to be cancelled lmao

@ProfessorFish 2 years ago

the bar is so low on the right , anyone can become their symbol

@CactusQueen96 2 years ago

Trying to pit her against queer people is the weirdest thing. Being drunk at music festivals and yelling memeably crass statements is nothing but relatable to us.