哈莉·韋爾奇和 Hawk Tuah Memecoin 崩潰

一個病毒式笑話如何變成加密貨幣騙局的故事

A memecoin, like most cryptocurrencies, has no inherent value. It is created to represent an internet meme, and its value is tied very loosely to that meme’s popularity; you could think of it as like owning stock in, say, a knock-knock joke. The most famous memecoin is Dogecoin, which was boosted by Elon Musk and refers to an internet-famous dog.

與大多數加密貨幣一樣，模因幣沒有內在價值。它是為了代表互聯網模因而創建的，其價值與該模因的受歡迎程度非常鬆散地聯繫在一起；你可以把它想像成擁有股票，比如說，一個敲門笑話。最著名的迷因幣是狗狗幣，它是由伊隆馬斯克推動的，指的是一隻網路上著名的狗。

More recently, people have fixated on a coin called Hawk, as in “Hawk Tuah,” the meme of the year. The coin was created by a team of crypto people and by Haliey Welch, the cute, blond 22-year-old woman who brought us that phrase over the summer. You may know this part of the story: In June, a man-on-the-street interviewer approached Welch, out on the town in Nashville, and asked her, “What’s one move in bed that makes a man go crazy every time?” She replied with perfect comedic timing, in a thick Tennessee accent: “You gotta give ’em that hawk tuah and spit on that thang.” This was very funny and went viral on TikTok and elsewhere. (Bryce Harper, the married and Mormon first baseman for the Philadelphia Phillies, imitated it on national television.) In the months that followed, Welch built an online brand as a relatable country girl turned “queen of memes,” selling trucker hats, meeting Shaq, launching an app named after her boyfriend, appearing in a bit on Jimmy Kimmel Live, and so on.

最近，人們開始關註一種名為 Hawk 的硬幣，就像當年的迷因「Hawk Tuah」一樣。該幣是由一群加密貨幣人士和 Haliey Welch 創建的，她是一位可愛的金髮 22 歲女性，她在夏天為我們帶來了這句話。你可能知道故事的這一部分：六月，一位街頭採訪者在納什維爾小鎮上找到韋爾奇，問她：“床上的什麼動作每次都會讓男人發瘋？ ”她以完美的喜劇時機回答，帶著濃重的田納西口音：“你必須給他們那個鷹圖阿，然後吐在那張唐裝上。”這非常有趣，並在 TikTok 和其他地方瘋傳。 （布萊斯哈珀(Bryce Harper)，費城費城人隊(Philadelphia Phillies) 隊的已婚摩門教一壘手，在國家電視台上模仿了這一做法。）在接下來的幾個月裡，韋爾奇建立了一個在線品牌，將一個親切的鄉村女孩變成了“模因女王”，銷售卡車司機帽子，滿足沙克（Shaq）推出了一款以她男朋友命名的應用程序，在吉米金梅爾現場（Jimmy Kimmel Live）中露面，等等。

Now she’s in hot water because Hawk’s value went almost immediately to pennies—but not before some insiders were able to turn a quick profit. In an effort to quell the outrage, Welch and the people she had worked with on the coin hosted a live broadcast on X in early December. Welch made a short, chipper statement at the beginning, and then an assortment of men talked for nearly an hour. The first, a crypto-world figure who went by Doc Hollywood on X but has since wiped his account, ranted at listeners, challenging them to consider whether they truly understood the importance of Hawk. “Hawk Tuah is a cultural meme that everyone knows here in America,” he said. “So, if you want to be part of this meme community—dope.” Welch piped up near the end of the stream simply to tell everyone that she was going to bed. “Anyhoo,” she said, “I’ll see you guys tomorrow.”

現在她陷入了困境，因為霍克的價值幾乎立即跌至幾美分，但在此之前，一些內部人士能夠快速獲利。為了平息憤怒，韋爾奇和她在代幣上的合作者於 12 月初在 X 上舉辦了一場直播。韋爾奇一開始發表了簡短而輕鬆的聲明，然後各種各樣的人談論了近一個小時。第一個是一位加密世界人物，他在 X 上被稱為 Doc Hollywood，但後來刪除了自己的帳戶，他向聽眾咆哮，挑戰他們是否真正理解 Hawk 的重要性。 「Hawk Tuah 是美國人人皆知的文化迷因，」他說。 “所以，如果你想成為這個模因社區的一部分——那就太棒了。”韋爾奇在溪流盡頭附近大聲喊道，只是為了告訴大家她要去睡覺了。 “無論如何，”她說，“明天見。”

But she didn’t reappear the next day. Instead, she vanished from the internet for weeks. She stopped releasing new episodes of her podcast, Talk Tuah (great name), and was quiet even as some of the other people involved in the coin made public statements about its spectacular failure. Then, news broke last week that a handful of people would attempt to sue her foundation (listed in the complaint as the Tuah the Moon Foundation) and various other parties, and Welch published a statement. “I am fully cooperating with and am committed to assisting the legal team representing the individuals impacted, as well as to help uncover the truth, hold the responsible parties accountable, and resolve this matter,” she wrote on X on Friday.

但第二天她就沒有再出現。相反，她從網路上消失了幾週。她停止發布播客 Talk Tuah（偉大的名字）的新劇集，並保持沉默，儘管其他一些參與該代幣的人公開聲明其慘敗。然後，上周有消息稱，少數人將試圖起訴她的基金會（在起訴書中被列為 Tuah the Moon 基金會）和其他各方，韋爾奇發表了一份聲明。她週五在 X 上寫道：“我將全力配合並致力於協助代表受影響個人的法律團隊，並幫助揭露真相、追究責任方責任並解決此事。”

The people around her talked about the coin as a “community-building tool” and “a movement.” It was a fake currency that was artificially tied to a brief (and crass) display of charisma that took place months ago. The notion that the online-creator economy could somehow transmogrify this incident into profit for a whole “community” of strangers—that those strangers had come together around the meme in some meaningful way, and that it would be able to change all of their lives—is magical thinking that has to be unique to our times.

她周圍的人將硬幣視為“社區建設工具”和“一場運動”。這是一種假貨幣，人為地與幾個月前發生的短暫（且粗俗）的魅力展示聯繫在一起。網路創作者經濟可以以某種方式將這一事件轉化為整個陌生人「社群」的利潤——這些陌生人以某種有意義的方式圍繞著迷因聚集在一起，這將能夠改變他們所有人的生活－這是我們這個時代獨有的神奇思維。

The original Hawk Tuah joke was good, but it was such a slim piece of IP. How much could really be milked out of something like that? It was just a moment, hardly anything. Yet it was inescapable. There was so much Hawk Tuah this year. How much of it was real? As it turns out: not as much as it seems.

Hawk Tuah 最初的笑話很好，但它是一個非常薄弱的​​ IP。這樣的東西到底能榨多少？這只是一瞬間，幾乎沒有什麼。但這是不可避免的。今年有很多 Hawk Tuah。其中有多少是真的？事實證明：並不像看起來那麼多。

The way Welch has told the story on her podcast, she initially spent weeks hiding from the Hawk Tuah meme, barricaded in her bedroom, streaming rom-coms. She was embarrassed by the joke, which she had told while drunk, and horrified by the number of people who had seen it. A friend persuaded her to come out of her room only because other people were profiting off her—selling bootleg merch and getting views on their own videos that used the clip. It would be silly not to get her own piece of the pie, especially because the pie might soon be gone. By July, she was everywhere.

正如韋爾奇在她的播客上講述這個故事的方式一樣，她最初花了數週時間躲在自己的臥室裡，躲在霍克·圖阿迷因中，觀看浪漫喜劇。她對自己在喝醉時講的這個笑話感到尷尬，並對看到這個笑話的人數感到震驚。一位朋友說服她離開她的房間，只是因為其他人從她身上獲利——出售盜版商品並獲得使用該剪輯的自己視頻的觀看次數。如果她不分到自己的一塊蛋糕，那就太愚蠢了，尤其是因為這塊蛋糕可能很快就會消失。到了七月，她已經無所不在了。

I became more interested in Welch in August, when she threw out the first pitch at a New York Mets game. She was there to raise money for an organization that gives service dogs to disabled veterans, and of course did not make any reference to oral sex. But people were furious nonetheless.

八月，當韋爾奇在紐約大都會隊的比賽中投出第一個投球時，我對韋爾奇更加感興趣。她去那裡是為了為一個為殘疾退伍軍人提供服務犬的組織籌集資金，當然沒有提到口交。但人們還是很憤怒。