Well That's One Way to Distract from the Weed Vid

On Tuesday a video was released showing One Direction's Zayn Malik and Louis Tomlinson smoking marijuana in the back of a van in Peru as 20-year-old international superstars are wont to do. The idea that these guys would smoke weed wasn't shocking, but when it comes to One Direction a lot can be made out of nothing. It makes sense that young fans and parents might be confused and disappointed, but scary Twitter trends are another story. In response to the video and its aftermath, One Direction's Liam Payne started the Twitter trends #WearAsManyClothesAsYouCanAtOnceFor1D and #WearAHoodyFor1D.

Payne started talking about the issue in a rather vague way saying, "Woah there's some pretty weird shit going on ATM everyone just calm down and don't do anything stupid cuz u can't take it back." He continued, "I know some people are having a laugh and that's all well and good but some people will take this shit serious so I suggest we stop." Seemingly as a way to divert everyone's attention back to a fun, positive place, Payne then wrote, "Today is such a weird day why don't we do a #wearahoodyfor1d or a #WearAsManyClothesAsYouCanAtOnceFor1D."

Now I'm going to give Payne the benefit of the doubt here and say that #wearahoodyfor1d isn't a Trayvon Martin reference because not only would that be totally inappropriate for the occasion, it would be making a controversial joke in the midst of the controversial situation the band is already dealing with. He has to be smart enough not to do that, right? Hopefully.

Anyway, both of the hashtags took off like wildfire as anything that has to do with One Direction does on Twitter and fans began posting photos of themselves wearing both hoodies and as many clothes as possible à la Joey on Friends . The entire thing seems incredibly wholesome in a way that says, "Hey! Look! We don't influence kids to do drugs, we influence them to do silly things like put on a bunch of t-shirts."

As for if this works as a distraction or not, there are such a massive amount of Directioners that some sort of issue is going to be plaguing the band at all times from some portion of fans no matter how well they're liked overall. There are the ones that take their obsession too far and do things like threaten Kendall Jenner and send scary messages to bloggers. (Trust me, I've been on the receiving end.) Then there's the ones who just want to be followed by Harry Styles on Twitter and will take silly photos wearing a bunch of clothes in order to support the guys. Hopefully, this is the majority of fans and if Payne's goal was simply pointing that out by calling them to duty, then mission achieved.