Men who have filmed think they should be famous too

Youtube

Tim Dickerson and DeArius Marlow just want recognition. In a recent interview with The New York TimesThe two men who filmed the now viral “Hawk Tuah Girl” for their YouTube channel “Tim & Dee TV” described the confusing and sometimes frustrating past ten days since the release of their infamous video in downtown Nashville.

“Ultimately, no one would know who she is if we didn’t bring it to light and publish it,” 24-year-old Marlow told the Just by Hailey Welch, who is now known by the nickname “Hawk Tuah Girl”.

“Many viewers who had never seen us before thought we had become big because of that one clip,” he continued. “People treated us like we were nobody and didn’t have a platform yet.”

In the interview, the Nashville duo recalled that Welch asked them to “spice up the questions a little bit” after they interviewed her and her friend as part of their brotherly interview series with men on the street. Dickerson, 25, told the times that after Welch uttered her instantly famous catchphrase, he thought to himself, “Oh yeah, this is going to be good.”

The difference in attention between Welch and the men who filmed her speaks to some of the complex and implicit racial and gender dynamics embedded in Dickerson and Marlow’s raunchy question-and-answer videos of drunken young women captured partying on Lower Broadway, one of the country’s most notorious streets. While the duo regularly interviews both men and women in their series, it’s usually the women who end up taking center stage.

“It’s mostly jokes,” Dickerson said. “We’re not putting pressure on anyone or anything – we’re just capturing the mood. That’s what we do best.”

While that viral moment catapulted Welch into overnight internet fame (with all the consequences that entails), spawned countless memes, landed her coveted media appearances, put her on stadium-sized concert stages, and led to her assembling a team of managers and lawyers, such fame (and, more importantly, an unexpected financial windfall) eluded the two men who filmed, edited, and set the stage for Welch’s moment.