About

Smoking Weed Makes You Scared is a meme-concept associated with the catchphrase When You Get So High You Start Getting Scared. The concept or cliché is that when someone smokes weed, they just get scared and paranoid instead of having a good time. The catchphrase "When You Get So High You Start Getting Scared" was first used on Facebook in 2014, but gained more usage on Twitter starting in August 2020 before spreading elsewhere online in the following years.

Origin

Although the correlation between feeling scared and anxious when consuming marijuana, especially in high doses, has existed in pop culture for decades, it didn't become a catchphrase online until early 2014. On March 30th, 2014, Facebook^[1] user Dj Sliink posted a meme using an image of a Black man crying on the Oprah Winfrey Show. He captioned the image "Wen U Get So High / U Start Getting Scared" using Impact font. The meme (shown below) received roughly 461,000 likes over the course of seven years.

Spread

In 2015, Imgflip user FreakKingJuice posted a meme that used an image of Lebron James crying. FreakKingJuice layered Impact font over the image reading "When You Smoke Weed For The First Time / And You Get So High You Start Getting Scared." The meme^[2] (shown below) received roughly 33,100 views and three upvotes over the course of six years.

The catchphrase started being used again more routinely on Twitter in 2020. For example, on August 5th, 2020, Twitter^[3] user @HollieRotten tweeted a meme using an image of Ellen Degeneres crying, layering a top and a bottom caption on the image reading "When You Get So High / You Start Getting Scared." The meme (shown below) received roughly 41,000 likes and 5,756 retweets over the course of one year.

The catchphrase appeared on Instagram in November 2020 as it spread to other platforms. The Instagram^[4] account @heterogeneousgreens0 posted a meme on November 20th, 2020, using an image of U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris. Again, the meme used the same catchphrase "When You Get So High / You Start Getting Scared." The post (shown below, left) received 281 likes over the course of 11 months. Instagram^[5] account @this.and.a.blunt also posted a meme using the catchphrase on December 28th, 2020. The post (shown below, right) received roughly 1,800 likes over the course of 10 months.

More Instagram meme pages^[6][7] used the catchphrase going into 2021. However, in November 2020, Instagram page @da_jekyll made a meme relating to smoking weed being an illogical activity rather than relying on the catchphrase "When You Get So High You Start Getting Scared." On November 30th, 2020, @da_jekyll posted a meme using a skeleton smoking a bong. The top and bottom caption of the image read "Fuck Yeah I Love To Get / Paranoid And Waste My Money." The post^[8] (shown below) received roughly 2,500 likes over the course of 11 months.

On January 17th, 2021, Twitter user @rrinconn tweeted "I’ve got 99 problems and smoking weed and then getting scared is one of them." The tweet^[9] (shown below) received 287 likes over the course of nine months.

On August 8th, 2021, Twitter user @bitchrespecter tweeted "the best part about smoking weed is getting scared." The tweet^[10] (shown below) received roughly 116,000 likes and 11,200 retweets over the course of two months.

@bitchrespecter's tweet inspired more tweets^[11][12] throughout August 2021, relating to smoking weed making one scared. Another tweet,^[13] posted on September 28th, 2021, plagiarized @bitchrespecter's tweet but received roughly 49,200 likes and 5,300 retweets regardless, bringing more attention to the concept in the days following.

Various Examples

Search Interest

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External References