A video surfaced Tuesday that seems to have gotten quite the response from fans of One Direction. Filmed by band member Louis Tomlinson, the five-minute video mostly spotlights his bandmate Zayn Malik. The friends are often seen hanging out together, leading the Internet to dub them “Zouis.”
The recording appeared to depict Malik partaking in a “joint” with Tomlinson. At the least, it was a rolled-up cigarette, and the pair were talking extensively about marijuana while smoking it. In fact, Louis said at one point, “Leaving Peru. Joint lit. Happy days.”
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At another time in the video, Tomlinson panned the camera to a police motorcyle outside their SUV. “Look at this b-tch! He’s having a look,” Tomlinson said. “He’s thinking, ‘I’m sure I can smell an illegal substance in there.’ And he’s hit the nail on the head.”
Later, he zooms in on Malik, saying, “‘One very, very important factor of Zayn’s warm up, of course, is Mary J herself. In fact, I will present it to him now for some fantastic singing.” He then passed the rolled-up cigarette over to Malik.
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By late Tuesday night, the DailyMail video was dominating social media with multiple Twitter hashtags trending nationwide, like #ZouisPassMeThatBlunt and #ZouisYouLightUpThatJointLikeNobodyElse, the latter a parody of the popular One Direction hit, “What Makes You Beautiful.” The more standard “Louis and Zayn” was also trending.
They even got Perez Hilton’s name trending. Fans pushed the gossip columnist up the trending list simply by defending their favorite band in massive numbers. After Hilton posted some snarky comments about the pair on his own social media site, such as saying that “Zayn and Louis are #Solangeing,” 1D fans came out swinging with some choice words of their own.
Zayn and Louis are #Solangeing!
— Perez Hilton (@PerezHilton) May 28, 2014
But while the band was getting plenty of attention online after the video’s release, it remains to be seen how the controversial subject matter of the recording might impact their future as teen pop sensations.