You Smell Like Weed / I Am Weed

About

"You Smell Like Weed" / "I Am Weed" refers to a brief exchange that took place between actress Megan Fox and rapper Machine Gun Kelly several years before they started dating. The exchange, described by Fox in an October 2021 interview with GQ, was parodied on social media in the days following the interview's publication, with users mocking its cheesiness or cringeworthiness and creating memes based on it.

Origin

On October 11th, 2021, GQ^[1] published an interview with celebrity couple Megan Fox and Machine Gun Kelly (MGK). In one part of the interview, Megan Fox describes the first time they briefly encountered each other, which happened at a GQ party in Los Angeles several years before they started dating. During the encounter, Fox told MGK that he "smelled like weed," with MGK responding, "I am weed" before stepping away. According to the couple, they didn't see each other's faces.

"I don’t remember your face… And I definitely would have remembered his face," she continues. "I just remember this tall, blond, ghostly creature and I looked up and I was like, 'You smell like weed.'" He looked down at me and he was like, “I am weed.” Then, I swear to God, he disappeared like a ninja in a smoke bomb."

On the same day, the British GQ posted the extract from the interview in a Twitter^[2] thread. The tweet (shown below) received over 3,400 retweets, 34,300 quote tweets and 24,600 likes in two days.

Spread

Starting on the same day as the interview's release, October 11th, 2021, the quote became a subject of mockery on Twitter, with users describing the exchange as cheesy and cringeworthy. For example, four hours after the original post, user @Sedition_Quinn tweeted^[3] a My Job Here Is Done meme that gained over 1,900 retweets and 33,900 likes in two days (shown below).

“I am weed” pic.twitter.com/NapZnTJfk3

— Spooky Agitator ☭☆ (@Sedition_Quinn) October 11, 2021

Later that day, Twitter^[4] user @faithwithanf posted a tweet referencing the quote that gained over 8,800 retweets in two days (shown below, left). Another tweet^[5] posted by user @betrayedbygod on October 12th gained over 13,300 retweets and 199,800 likes in one day (shown below, right).

The post also spawned a series of memes in which users applied the exchanges to images of couples from pop culture. For example, on October 11th, 2021, Twitter^[6] user @lukebiwalker combined the dialogue with an image of Princess Leia and Han Solo from Star Wars (shown below, left), with the post gaining over 60 retweets and 420 likes in two days. On October 13th, 2021, Twitter^[7] and Facebook^[8] meme page Classical Studies Memes for Hellenistic Teens posted a version based on the painting "Apollo and Daphne" attributed to Piero del Pollaiolo (shown below, right). The post gained over 300 retweets and 3,600 likes on Twitter and 620 reactions and 150 shares on Facebook in under 24 hours.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References