Why you’re seeing a stoned Ghostface on TikTok

Between being in the middle of spooky season and the new trailer for the latest Scream movie, Ghostface is having a moment. But on TikTok, the slasher-friendly serial killer is the face of an effort to easily gain new followers. 

When we say “cult,” it’s not in the traditional sense. TikTok cults are more of a way to get similar-minded people (e.g. you like the same musician) to follow one another. You pledge to follow everyone with an agreed-upon avatar so everyone’s follower count is boosted, interact with each other, support the person or thing that ties everyone together, and show up in comments of related videos to defend that person or thing if, for some reason, they’re being insulted.

With TikTok’s Ghostface Cult, it’s a similar principle applied to a fictional serial killer. According to Know Your Meme, @scream.cult_leader instructs viewers that if they want more followers, they should change their avatar to Ghostface. But it isn’t any old photo of Ghostface: It’s the version seen in the 2000 slasher comedy Scary Movie, which depicted Ghostface as a killer who could be placated with a simple “Wassup?” or an offer to smoke weed. In the avatar grabbed by @scream.cult_leader, Ghostface arrived to do some slashing, only to accept a group of stoners’ offer to smoke with them. (Ghostface, now stoned, then accidentally kills most of the stoners with a hook.)

Here is another view into how it was designed to work.

Soon enough, TikTok became flooded with Ghostface as some people made videos celebrating Ghostface in all of his forms.

“That’s literally all there is to it, and because it’s so easy to join, it’s become the biggest cult on all of TikTok right now,” Noah Glenn Carter explained in a video about the trend.

Now that it’s November, some people might have switched out the Ghostface avatars. But even with just a cursory glance over on TikTok, Ghostface is still quite a formidable presence.