HALLOWEEN 2025 BELONGS TO THE CHRONICALLY ONLINE

editor MAREK BARTEK

“This reminds me of that meme,” is a sentence you’d hear me say at least twenty times a day. We do spend a lot of time online — doomscrolling breaking news, nostalgia clips, pop-culture relics, and pure brain-rot in equal measure. And the more time we are online, the more our humour, references, and even our social lives get meme-coded. So much so that we have started to speak in inside jokes because that’s how we recognise each other. Popular phrases and unforgettable images and videos have become not just a language but also an indicator of bonding. Common taste in humour is, after all, known to be one of the best ways to build relationships.

While past years tried to make Halloween chic, this year we have dropped the beauty filter. No more runway-cosplay or couture skeleton glam. Instead, we’re showing up as niche references, unserious crushes, and unhinged corners of our algorithms hoping someone across the room would go, “Oh my god, I get it.”

We openly choose chaos.

images via instagram @2000beachbunny and @virginradiomontreal

Troye Sivan went as Addison Rae reading Britney Spears’ memoir, a Dakota Johnson–themed party went viral, Demi Lovato just showed up dressed as the unforgettable “Poot Lovato,” and across feeds, the now-iconic “I hate gay Halloween, what do you mean you’re…” meme became a costume generator. Ironically, on the day we’re meant to dress up, we are letting the inner beauty of our personalities shine through and translate into the external result.

all images via instagram @itsthebirthdaygirl, @didyoujustsaywig, @nowthis and @minus18youth

In fashion terms, it feels like the liberation from quiet luxury’s chokehold. We are collectively experiencing an identity renaissance, the return of playful maximalism in a social way. The aim is no longer to be aspirational; we want to be recognisable to our algorithmic soulmate.

Because beneath the camp of it all, there is something deeper. After months of bleak headlines, economic anxiety, and digital fatigue, we don’t want gorgeousness. We want softness, silliness, connection, and the relief of non-performative coolness. Halloween has become the day to let your weirdest tabs be open. More is more, no taste required. Hyper-specific costumes turned into a search for our people — the ones who would recognise our reference in half a second and laugh, because they live online too. We’re turning away from “Who do you want to be?” and going for “Who will get this?”

Halloween 2025 proves us that the scariest thing you can reveal is the side of algorithm you’re on.