Spirit Halloween wants you to know it doesn’t actually sell those fake social media costumes

Spirit Halloween has enjoyed a lot of internet attention in recent years, though it doesn’t always seem to know how to capitalize on it. After refusing to do the right thing and cast Nick Lutsko, Spirit Halloween theme writer and King Of Halloween himself, as the lead in its official movie, the party store is now eager to distance itself from another viral celebration of its business by informing the internet that it does not actually sell costumes like the one below.

As Rolling Stone’s Tim Chan and Miles Klee point out in a recent article, the company has been working hard to make it very clear that it has no involvement with obvious joke costumes like a Spirit Halloween-style “Gay Guy” product mock-up. Despite letting the public know that “photoshopping our packages seems to be trending at the moment” and that it doesn’t carry these kinds of outfits, Spirit probably isn’t going to be able to win out against the tidal wave of image edits that the most naive will assume are real costumes sold from its stores.

That’s because the concept provides a perfect meme format. It’s simple, straightforward, and doesn’t take a lot of time to participate in. Someone takes a Spirit Halloween costume package, throws a(n often generic) costume title on it alongside a photo, and, if the creator wants to go the extra mile, lists a few accessories to flesh out the joke.

The result is that social media has been flooded with faux Spirit outfits recently, with examples ranging from Arrival and off-brand Star Wars costumes to “Pinhead In JNCOs,” “Conservative Guy Scared Of Cities,” “Graduate Student,” and a very vulgar description of Succession’s Gerri Kellman.

It’s not just us plebes participating. The celebrities have gotten in on it, too. Sometimes, this has taken the form of very straightforward descriptions of what they’re known for (as in Diplo’s case), sometimes with references to their most popular work (as in Sarah Michelle Gellar’s post), and sometimes with solid joke replies of their own, as Lil Nas X has demonstrated.

Fortunately for Spirit, its fellow brands have also latched onto the trend with their own language-learning app, boxed macaroni, and taquito-hocking entries, ensuring that this joke format is already well on its way toward a sad, untimely death anyway. And at this point, there’s really only one other move left for the company to make: Write up a hashtag and join in.

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