Millennials And Gen Z Are All-In On This Unexpected Halloween Trend — And Their Looks Are So Good You Will Want To Join

Spooky season has always been the perfect excuse to go a little wild with Halloween costumes, from the clever and creative to the downright outrageous. In recent years, celebrities have taken that spirit to new heights, turning the annual holiday into a competition of sorts, with elaborate Hollywood-inspired looks and Instagram-worthy photo shoots.

But while the rich and famous keep pulling out all the stops, a niche internet trend that’s emerged over the past few years has given people — especially millennials and Gen Z — a whole new reason to get innovative with their Halloween costumes, and it has nothing to do with looking glamorous.

If you’re among the chronically online, chances are the phrase “I hate gay Halloween, what do you mean you’re dressed as ____?” has made its way across your timeline at least once around this time of year. Those posts typically feature someone dressed as an incredibly specific meme or pop culture moment — you know, the kind of references that only make perfect sense to your internet mutuals and absolutely no one else.

Think legendary “Real Housewives” scenes, the red-carpet mishaps of awards season and unforgettable moments from celebrity interviews, like Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo “holding space” for “Defying Gravity” during the “Wicked” press tour. If you’re feeling particularly ambitious, you could even go as Molly, the singing mechanical bird that was at the center of Kelly Clarkson’s viral feud with a Brooklyn store.

In short, nothing is ever too strange to fit these criteria. In fact, the more obscure the costume, the better.

And with Halloween just around the corner, social media is already brimming with this year’s “I hate gay Halloween” submissions. Some are gloriously unhinged, and others are impressively unique. Still, they’re all bound to make you laugh — even if you have no clue what you’re looking at.

Halloween has long offered queer people an outlet for self-expression. As psychotherapist and LGBTQ+ advocate Silva Neves explained in Psychology Today, the holiday “offers a space allowing LGBTQ+ individuals to explore their queer creativity without judgment.”

Today, that spirit has taken on a new life online, where “gay Halloween” is all about celebrating costumes so hyper-specific that only the internet-obsessed will get them. And like many internet trends, it all seemed to start with a single post.

According to Know Your Meme, the “I hate gay Halloween” trend appears to trace back to October 2023, when X user @beefyfridgers posted: “hate going to gay halloween parties like what do you mean you’re lady gaga at the 2:53 mark of the judas music video.”

And just like that, a wonderfully bizarre tradition was born. Since 2024, the trend has gained so much traction online that it could very well rival celebrities’ over-the-top Halloween looks in the years to come.

The public’s appetite for extravagance may already be wearing thin, at least based on recent social media chatter.

And then there are those who take issue with stars rolling out their costumes days — or even weeks — ahead of Oct. 31. To them, the early reveals take some of the surprise and silliness out of a holiday that’s supposed to be all about fun.

For those who have grown weary of “celebrity Halloween,” the frustration seems to stem from how the holiday has changed in the age of social media. Halloween has always let people dress up and let loose at parties and events (and still does), but celebrities have increasingly turned it into an online spectacle, debuting multiple looks meant only for glossy photoshoots.

Meanwhile, the average person usually just sticks to one costume. According to a 2025 survey by HalloweenCostumes.com, just 30% of U.S. adults planned to wear two or more costumes during spooky season.

There’s also been a general shift in what Halloween is all about; the goal these days seems to be creating content that will go viral online. That’s part of the appeal of “gay Halloween,” too: It lets people show off their niche internet knowledge and create a moment people can’t resist liking and sharing across social media.

“Attention is the most powerful currency in today’s world,” Taylor Lorenz, journalist and author of “Extremely Online,” previously told the Los Angeles Times. “And Halloween is an opportunity to garner as much of that as possible.”

In other words, modern Halloween has gone digital-first. Whether you’re creating content or engaging with it, the festivities now unfold as much on our screens as in real life.

That might have seemed unthinkable a few decades ago, but if “I hate gay Halloween” has proved anything, it’s that no tradition is immune to change. As trends come and go, and social media finds new things to obsess over, Halloween will no doubt keep reinventing itself.