Ashley is just your average stoner next door, but she is also potentially the next cannabis YouTube sensation. With a big smile and an easy-going demeanor, the Washington-based enthusiast creates neatly edited, casually informative videos under the name Positive Smash 420. The channel features her real-life experiences trying cannabis strains from all over Washington and cannabis-oriented products from across the country; her content runs the gamut from reviews to smoke sessions. Her 78,000 YouTube followers also interact with her through Twitter, Snapchat, and her Patreon account, where folks can subscribe and access a whole other collection of videos. She uses her Patreon money to pay for the products she features in her videos, allowing her to buy a wide selection of odd, expensive, and obscure treats.
“I feel like a large portion of my audience is adults who are looking for a smoking buddy,” says Ashley. It’s common in her videos for her to talk as if you were in the room, right up to her signature, “Cheers!”, exclaimed into the camera before every toke. But she also gets plenty of connoisseurs and industry folks, “people looking for information about quality cannabis products and … reviews on some amazing Washington legal weed.”
In her “weed haul” videos, she’s like a kid in a candy store—going on an epic shopping spree, then bringing all the goodies home to share on camera. Lining up bags from different shops around Puget Sound, she excitedly recounts her conversations with the many budtenders who helped her. In her review videos, she’s honest and thorough, taking time to describe flavors and sensations while chatting with you like you’re old friends. She sometimes offers an intimate look into her own life; recently, one of her two Doberman pinschers fell ill, and she shared her fear and exhaustion: “I’m so thankful on a daily basis to have a audience of people I feel like I connect to and can talk to whenever I need to.” Thanks to her rise to fame, she’s toked bowls with the likes of Farmer Tom and Ed Rosenthal, and at Hempfest this year she took part in The Social Weedia group alongside Internet-famous heshers like @thedabspot and @thegaystoner.
Ashley says her favorite videos to shoot are long smoke sessions with a nice fat joint, “just something where I can talk for a long amount of time and really feel like I’m really smoking with the people watching.” And I think these are some of my favorite videos of hers, too. They really are a tiny slice of stoner life in the 21st century. Who knows how laws and culture are going to change in the next few years? It’s potentially a precious thing that we have this window of legality letting in an air of permissiveness.
Looking forward, Ashley says she’d like to leverage her YouTube success into something bigger, perhaps working with larger media outlets and film houses. But let’s focus on the here and now—namely, what Positive Smash 420 has been smokin’. “I have this amazing strain from Gold Leaf Garden, my personal favorite grower aside from Seattle Green Bud, called Vitamin C that just rocks my world! I love it so much. So much citrus and sweetness. It smells like a beautiful orange, lemon, pine tang.” Cheers!
stashbox@seattleweekly.com
