HANNAH Barron, known online as the ‘Catfish girl’, has urged her followers not to be “fooled” by fake social media accounts after she starting trending online.
The 27-year-old became a hot topic on X, formerly Twitter, on March 9 after user Sameera Khan shared videos of the influencer “noodling,” which is fishing for catfish using only your hands.
Khan, a foreign policy analyst, also posted a video of the Alabama woman helping build a shed and wrote that her deeply Southern accent should be “illegal” and that women should be banned from doing manual labor.
Khan went on to suggest there is “nothing feminine” about American women and said they are “literally men.”
That post, as of Thursday afternoon, has been viewed 62 million times and has 31,000 comments on it.
Social media users hit back at Khan, and Barron responded with some sage advice for people everywhere.
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She began with a subtle dig saying she would name “this girl” but can’t remember her name “because I don’t have a clue who she is, so that should tell you how relevant this person is.”
Barron went on to tell her followers how she grew up a “weird kid” because she hunted and fished “too much, back then when it wasn’t cool for women” to do it.
“I am so proud of all the women in the outdoors now who are making it cool and popular, I’m so proud of these women, I think we’re doing great,” she said.
Barron ended her post by imploring people to “embrace your own individuality, be yourself and don’t worry about what anything else says.”
“So, don’t be scared to build your own box and don’t ty and fit in anybody else’s. Be your own person and you’ll be happier in the long run,” Barron told her followers.
In the aftermath of the incident, Barron “figured” she should return to the platform where all the “craziness” played out and create an account.
In a video post, she explained that she previously had an account on X but it got suspended for reasons, “I still don’t know why.”
She went on to explain she couldn’t use the handle she uses across all her social media platforms, due to fake accounts in her name, so had to use a variation of it.
Barron told her followers – she has over 200,000 since joining days ago – that it is her “only Twitter account”.
“There are some fakes ones out there and they are not me, and they’ve got a bunch of followers too. But they’re not me.”
She concluded the post by telling her followers: “so don’t be fooled .”
Barron has over 1.5 million followers on her Instagram and over 2 million followers on her TikTok where she shares videos of herself “hillybilly handfishing” along with 75,000 subscribers on YouTube.
She began noodling when she was 16 and started filming the hobby in college. her first Facebook video was viewed 25 million times.