THE VIOLENT END OF WEED CULTURE

GONZO

“Fuck your tranquility. Fuck your inner peace.”

By Denzel Rust · May 18, 2026 · 12 min read

It’s Monday morning, April 20th, 2026 in Washington Square Park. I’m staring at a man’s tits. The rest of the world is just punching in. Making their first cup of coffee, saying hi to the receptionist, combing through missed emails from the weekend. But not here. Here, in the park, a polycule collaborates to roll a joint. Among them is the man with humongous fake tits. Mustache. Bandana. Basketball shorts. Tits. They are so large, and so bare, I can only assume he is their leader.

The past few years, weed has shifted from a social drug to an individual one. No longer a peace pipe by the fire, but a jar of pills beside a nightstand. I’m here to be proven wrong. Not to smoke, but to surveil. To observe “Weed Culture” in a prosocial state. To secretly record people with my phone, take pictures of them without consent, then publish it online as content.

To my left is a masked man with a large cardboard sign. At its center is a crudely drawn Star of David, holding just beyond its sextants the names of America’s major news corporations. ABC, CNN, NBC, CBS. Within the star is the phrase “Control News!”

The masked man holding the sign is racially ambiguous. He stands in the core of Manhattan, the greatest borough in New York, in the greatest city in America, in the greatest country on Earth. He is, by any anthropic definition, holding up his sign at the center of the universe.

Around him, stoners gather to celebrate weed. A drug that resists simple chemical distinction. Both a depressant, and a stimulant. A dissociative and a psychedelic. The only drug that acts as an upper, downer, and sider depending on who smokes. A narcotic Rorschach test which reflects back the internal state of the consumer. Neither good nor bad. A mirror.

“Are you stoned?” I ask the guy with the sign.

“I don’t want to talk to you,” he responds.

Nearby, some Israelis are willing to talk to me. Their sign reads, “We’re IDF reservists & veterans Ask us ANYTHING,” and below that, “Seriously, would war criminals come speak with you about it?”

They stand in the public square, poised to engage in productive civic debate. To find common ground through facts and logic. One wears the Israeli flag like a cape. Everyone around them is extremely high. This is what democracy looks like. The Marketplace of Ideas.

“We want peace!” Says one of the Jews.

“Fuck your peace!” Screams back a massive, ogre-like Palestinian, “Keep that peace shit to yourself.”

“You don’t want peace?”

“I want to kill Jews.”

“Let me ask you a question… let me ask you a question… Do you think all Jews should be killed?” Asks the IDF reservist.

“Yes,” he says. Staring down the reservist with blank, resolute, open-mouthed candor.

“Mmmhmmm,” a black tranny nods along to the exchange, “You tellem!”

Dark clouds of second-hand smoke gather above us, blotting out God’s light over the faces of the damned. The tranny reaches down and eats something off the ground. Maybe a mint.

After a while, the tranny, the Palestinian, and a few other anti-Israelites are standing together talking shop away from the IDF. I approach.

“Hey guys just wanted to say I’m totally on your side,” I say, fist-bumping the big Pali.

“Hell yeah,” he says.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“Don’t you think maybe the Jews control weed?”

“They control everything.”

“And don’t you think they might want to like, use weed to keep everyone dumbed down?”

“Yes for sure,” says the Pali.

“But you’re stoned right now?” I ask.

“Oh yeah.”

I ask for a picture. They not only agree, but seem excited. The Pali proudly holds up his bag of weed for the shot.

The Pali and another nearby stoner get into an argument. The Pali maintains that Jews use weed to keep people dumbed down. The other stoner, a skinny Mexican, argues to the contrary that “they” don’t want weed to be legal because it frees your mind, and allows you to see through their propaganda. Nearby, two pitbulls, one leashed and not, growl at each other by a trashcan.

Near a statue, a young girl plays acoustic guitar. A cover of April Come She Will by Jewish artists Simon and Garfunkel. Before the song ends, she’s drowned out by a minority blasting Lil Jon from a Beats Pill. After struggling through one more song, she puts her guitar back in its case and heads home.

On my way back to the center of the park I pass the guy with the “Control News” sign. He’s talking to a young pair of dudes, a guy with a Beanie and a guy with dreads. My presence interrupts their dialogue. The Signbearer points to me out of nowhere and says, “He’s Jewish!”

The Beanie and the Dreads aren’t fazed, but the Signbearer hurries off.

“Was he right? Are you Jewish?” asks the Beanie.

“I am,” I admit, “What were you guys talking about?”

“Well,” says the Nerd, “I was telling him like, you know, that guy thinks the Jews are behind everything, but it’s actually the Irish. The Irish are the real ones behind it all. It’s turtles all the way down.”

The Dreads guy has less to say. He just asks me if I want some stickers. I say sure and he pulls out a collection with AI generated porn on them. Uncanny cocks and balls and shafts twisting and turning into knots. The one he hands me to keep features a grotesquely erect Bigfoot. I say thanks and that I really appreciate it.

I stare at the Bigfoot. At its massive exposed tits. I’m reminded, of course, of the man at the entrance. Somehow their tits are the same. One pair, existing simultaneously in physical and digital realms. Products of unholy prompting by chemically addled minds, manifested in concert by the Thermonuclear God. It’s then I hear a scream.

I turn around. Sure enough it’s the guy with the tits. He’s in a physical altercation with a black lady in an electric wheelchair.

“You a whole ass dude!” She screams, “Nobody wanna see those fake fuckin titties nigga!”

He yells back at her for being transphobic, which causes her to pull out a metal chain and start swinging. He taunts her by getting just close enough for her to strike, then moving away at the last second. She manages to swing the chain and hold a joint at the same time with the same hand.

Most people just film. Among the few who intervene, there’s confusion about who is the victim.

“You gon come around here and put yo tits in my muthafuckin face!” She screams, chain sailing through the air, while her son or boyfriend tries to restrain her by taking her hand off the electric wheelchair’s joystick. Tits guy flees the scene after one swing comes a little too close to his bandana-clad head.

“They call me the wheelchair baddy bitch! I’m about that muthafuckin’ life!” She yells. In their final interaction the tits guy yells “Fuck you!” at her from across the park, spurring her to pull down her own shirt, shake her female tits, and yell “These muthafuckas is real!”

By now the park is completely packed. Swaths of mystery meat ethnics pass joints around and a great mass of bluetooth speakers cohere into a violent symphony of third-world distortion.

A young latina police officer stands to the side. I ask her if it’s legal to smoke weed in the park and she says she isn’t sure. I ask if there was some directive to leave the revelers alone and she says she isn’t sure. I ask if I can interview her for a piece I’m writing and she says absolutely not.

Over by the arch, a monk in red robes sits cross-legged on the ground. Perfectly still, observing the chaos with pleasant indifference. After a while, a skinny white guy takes off his shoes and sits directly in front of the Monk. With a smug, self-satisfied grin, he raises two middle fingers. Fuck your tranquility. Fuck your inner peace.

A buff Hispanic stands next to me. I ask him if he's high and he says yes. I ask him if he prefers indica or sativa and he says hybrid. I ask him to describe the vibe here, in Washington Square Park, on 4/20, and he says “tense.”

Nearby are a group of high schoolers. One of them has a MAGA hat. I ask them if they’re high and they say no, they’re just here to make content. The main one in the MAGA hat explains to me that the plan is to try and get someone to attack him. His friends fasten together camera equipment while he poses for a picture, revealing a shirt that says Kosher in the font of the Supreme logo.

I walk away from the arch and back over to the grass. Some people sit on blankets. A surprising number are alone. On benches, by themselves, smoking their own private joints. Listening to music. Scrolling on their phones. Eating single serving fast casual meals. Participating in the collective celebration from a vantage point of total isolation. I count four different adults coloring in coloring books.

I look over and see the Pali being handcuffed, surrounded by eight officers. He says he didn’t do anything. They say it’s on tape. I ask one of the IDF guys what’s going on and he tells me the Pali, unable to compete in the marketplace of ideas, started punching people in the face.

As they walk off with the Pali, a crowd forms around the IDF onlookers. A sea of red-eyed and brown-skinned objectors screaming at them for being colonizers, racists, and baby killers. I ask the same IDF guy if he’s stoned and he says no. I ask if he knew today was 4/20 and he says no. I ask him if the backlash is worse today than usual given that everyone is baked out of their minds. No again.

I ask if they were able to change anyone’s minds and though he says no a fourth time, he qualifies it by telling me the real goal is content, and they sure got some content.

No one escapes the panopticon of the park. Portable cameras in people’s hands. Security cameras on buildings. Body cams on the Police. I think of the man’s tits. Their bareness. My own. I’m not stoned, but I might as well be, as the paranoia of permanence sets in. We are all here, in this great Mexican standoff, lenses aimed, taking nervous hits under the overcast gaze of a billion permanent eyes.

Standing near the IDF reservist is some kind of security professional. Non-descript clothing. A black baseball cap. A curled cable running out of his jacket and up to his ear piece.

I follow the Agent to the center of the park. Nearby, a girl with whitewash jeans and a purple microphone tells her camera woman to stand a little further to the left. They’re here for content too. She pulls in a frat bro with a snapback and a hoodie for an interview.

“What’s it like dating in NYC?” She asks.

“Oh man. It’s tough. But I mean you just gotta put yourself out there.”

“What’s the secret to putting yourself out there?”

He pauses for a moment, really considering what the secret might be.

“I think just don't be afraid of people, don't be afraid to talk to people. Just don't be afraid."

Don’t be afraid. Just don’t be afraid.

You talk to people who still smoke weed and they all say the same thing. They say they used to smoke all the time and never had any problems. They say nowadays they feel paranoid and schizophrenic. They conclude that the weed’s changed—that it’s gotten stronger and more toxic. That almost every time they do it now they resolve to finally quit.

But as I leave Washington Square Park, saying goodbye to the black lady with the chain, to the guy with the huge tits, the IDF reservists, the MAGA tiktoker, the Monk antagonizer, the Signbearer, and the soon to be criminally charged Pali, I wonder if it’s the chicken rather than the egg. If weed is just weed, same as it’s always been, and it’s the people who have gone insane.

At its peak, “Weed Culture” was a passive rebellion against bourgeois ennui. Half-Baked came out in 1998, within a year of The Matrix, Office Space, and Fight Club. These were films about upper class disillusionment, about the horrors of high paying jobs, fancy apartments, and racially homogenous communities.

But today’s institutions have crumbled, and medieval peasant paranoia has become the dominant worldview. Jewish lizards control the government and they’re watching your every move. When Bob Marley proclaimed that, “If everybody smoked weed, the world would be a more peaceful place,” he may have been right. But his world is not our world. Something killed the high.

Today Washington Square Park got stoned. It wasn’t giggly or decadent—but deranged. Charged with a sense of ambient violence and conspiratorial dread. A stage for America to exercise its most retarded inner demons under dark and smokey skies. A schizophrenic simulacra of whatever “Weed Culture” once was.

The last thing I see leaving the park is a sign telling me I can make 15 dollars an hour listening to “Jewish Podcasts.” Happy Birthday Hitler.