The Viral “Gay Halloween” Memes, Explained

Since we're now fully into spooky season, it's no surprise that “Gay Halloween” memes are taking over Twitter/X.

The format is simple. Users share examples of hyper-specific Halloween costumes, often drawn from niche online references. Here is an example:

However, there is something more interesting to this trend, particularly the rare blending of real life and the online world. Before we get there, however, let's take a closer look at the trend.

How popular are the “Gay Halloween” memes?

In a word: incredible. There are thousands of posts on this topic online, with a total view count in the tens of millions. While the focus of these “Gay Halloween” memes varies, there are some trends. For example, many point to recently released films, such as this tweet about them The challengers:

Another popular trend is celebrity memes that fold in on themselves. Like this reference to a Björk red carpet outfit:

And probably the biggest subject of “Gay Halloween” memes are the memes themselves, particularly images or events that have gone viral online:

However, this “Gay Halloween” meme trend doesn’t happen in a vacuum. This is a fascinating case study in how the internet and real life come together, which happens more rarely than you might think.

What do the “Gay Halloween” memes mean?

There's an interesting dichotomy at the heart of online culture. When users are on places like Twitter, they feel like it's the center of the universe and that everything that happens there has immediate significance for the entire world. That is not the case.

In other words, Twitter is not real life. Studies have shown that social media groups are not truly representative of the world outside. This means that there is a gap between the Internet and normal society.

However, for the LGBTQIA+ community, things are a little different. Because they make up a smaller portion of the population, it can be difficult for people in this group to meet similar people. This makes the internet an incredibly important place psychologically, as they can form a community online that they may not have in the real world.

The “Gay Halloween” trend for LGBTQIA+ people can be seen as a way to bring this life lived on the internet into the real world. This is a direct way to combine their personal, intimate experiences of online cultures with a mainstream vacation. There's really no other time of year when people can dress however they want and no one will say anything about it – that's why Halloween is such an important time for the LGBTQIA+ community.

The “Gay Halloween” memes are an expression of that joy, a transition between their rich online lives and the rest of the world.

Something similar happens to groups outside the LGBTQIA+ community. Here, the “Gay Halloween” meme is a moment for extremely online people to show off their knowledge and enthusiasm in the real world. They are able to relate to and celebrate niche internet-based events that they would not otherwise be able to. It is a crossover event.

Ultimately, Halloween and the memes associated with it allow extremely online people to connect with society in the most unusual setting of all: the real world.