The ‘joint’ video of Zayn Malik and Louis Tomlinson smoking a suspicious looking roll-up and joking about drugs has been met with abject horror by hordes of One Direction, and in particular, Zayn Malik fans
Yet after the storm has passed and the righteous indignation of the whiter than white brigade becomes nothing more than a discontented whimper, Zayn and the gang may just discover that the notorious ‘joint’ video does wonders for Malik and his merry men’s reputations.
In the meantime, Zayn Malik, Louis Tomlinson, and the other three, need to brace themselves and be prepared for a fallout of epic proportions. There’s a media feeding frenzy going on and it concerns Malik and Tomlinso’s marijuana escapades, in what has to be said, is a relatively entertaining and harmless video.
In fact Malik and Tomlinson’s cameos in what is now being described as the ‘joint’ video are a lot more engaging, amusing, and above all, real, than any of the drab nonsense scripted for Malik and the rest of One Direction in This Is Us.
Not that a lot of broken-hearted One Direction fans have seen the humorous element in Malik’s behavior.
The Daily Mail have reported that many Zayn Malik fans have demanded an apology from Zayn and some have even burnt their One Direction concert tickets. Ouch!
Yet as much as the likes of Simon Cowell enjoy selling the idea of Zayn Malik and the rest of One Direction contentedly living in something akin to a Peter Pan-esque time-warp where boys never become men. For Zayn Malik and the bunch, it’s an impossible impracticality.
Boy-bands have a limited shelf-life. Singers like Zayn Malik can choose not to evolve and slowly stagnate as they desperately perpetrate the myth of happily spending their days frolicking through a squeaky clean kingdom of unicorns and rainbows in a bid to shift as much product as possible.
On the other hand, before the cracks in any carefully constructed and artificial reality begin to show, is it not better to slay the PR dragon yourself in a blaze of glory, or in Zayn Malik and Louis Tomlinson’s case, a video extolling the virtues of ‘Mary J’.
Zayn Malik and Louis Tomlinson appear to be having a right old rare time of it in the ‘joint’ video. Malik and his mate come across as two young guys chilling out, shooting the breeze, and cutting loose from the claustrophobic and restrictive world of professional PR.
Doing a little bit of messy growing up in public never hurt Justin Bieber or Miley Cyrus’s bottom line.
What effect the ‘drug scandal’ will have on Zayn Malik and the rest of One Direction’s future remains to be seen, but as the person who leaked the video no doubt knows, any publicity is good publicity.