Fawn Weaver founded Uncle Nearest to honor the formerly enslaved master distiller who taught Jack Daniel his secret to making whiskey.
Now Fawn is going viral for publicly humiliating a former classmate.
The man approached Fawn at a promotional event and introduced himself as her former classmate.
“So I’m supposed to remember you?” she asked him. She then shouted to the crowd, “OK can I tell y’all that this man just said do you remember me. I said make it make sense to me, because we were in the same class in the sixth, seventh and eighth grades!”
She looked at the man as the crowd laughed. “He’s being serious,” she continued. “Are you serious? I do not. I’m sorry. I don’t remember the sixth, the seventh, or the eighth grades.”
Cell phone video of their interaction went viral and social media users dragged Fawn for being so cruel and heartless.
CEO of Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey puts man on blast for claiming they were classmates for over 3 years — 6th, 7th, and 8th grade. ‘So I’m supposed to remember you?’ ??? pic.twitter.com/P9VsMlwPwp
— Rain Drops Media (@Raindropsmedia1) December 12, 2025
Fawn responded to the backlash by posting the full video on Instagram. She captioned the video:
“CONTEXT MATTERS – Since 2017, I’ve met tens of thousands of people in public, including thousands just in the past couple of weeks. I trust those real interactions and the people who’ve experienced me firsthand. I will let that sustained truth speak for itself.
That said, I want to be clear at the outset.
I do apologize.
I’ve reached out directly to the young man in this video. Friends who were with him have shared publicly that the viral clip is out of context and that he experienced the moment as lighthearted, as I intended. Still, that does not replace hearing it from him personally.
If I hurt or embarrassed him in any way, I apologize without hesitation. Anyone who encounters me should leave feeling encouraged. If they don’t, that responsibility is mine. I take seriously what God has called me to do.
But then she backtracked and seemed to blame the man for startling her as she stopped to sign autographs.
“For context, when he approached me, I was trying to get inside where hundreds were waiting. He was inches from my face, with no greeting, no smile, and a blank expression, offering only a comment about middle school. It caught me off guard,” she wrote.
“I went to three different schools between the sixth and the ninth grade and graduated from a different one entirely. So I was startled, and so was everyone around me. Security was close, but I’ve always asked him to stand back unless I believe I’m in danger [because] I like to speak to everyone, hug everyone, make people feel seen. So instead of calling security, I tried to move us out of that moment that I couldn’t fully read, and I did that with a joke.”
Fawn’s IG followers explained it was her words and her tone that threw people off.
One person wrote: “It was the putting him on blast part that was the most embarrassing. We saw the video already; this view didn’t make it any better.”
Another person wrote: “It’s how you said it & gathered a crowd- repeated it loud & wanted others to agree so they can have a chuckle. It wasn’t funny at all, he probably had a good memory to share…”
A third person commented: “She showed who she really is. That moment was pure.”
Watch the full video below.
