The 'Scream' Character Ghostface Is All Over TikTok Ahead of the New Movie

Thanks to a 25-year legacy, Ghostface, the masked killer from the Scream franchise, has proven to be an enduring character. Although the internet barely existed when the first Scream movie came out, Ghostface has now gained a cult following on TikTok. Thankfully, that cult following is a pretty harmless way to pay homage to a fictional serial killer.

TikTok cults are not a new thing, and all they typically involve is changing your profile picture so that it reflects whatever the latest cult is. Right now, that cult happens to be the Ghostface Cult, which involves changing your profile picture to an image of Ghostface from the Scream franchise. Once you change your profile picture, other members of the cult will seek you out and follow you. Users can gain hundreds or even thousands of followers this way.

The Ghostface Cult is well-timed, as it coincides with the celebration of Halloween in the US. Many are also changing their profile picture in the wake of the trailer for the newest installment in the series, which is simply titled Scream and is set to debut in January of 2022. The franchise has already produced four movies since the first one premiered in 1996.

Thankfully, participating in the Ghostface Cult is a relatively straightforward process. All you need to do is change your profile picture to the image of Ghostface that most people are using, and you may also want to change your username to something spookier if you're really hoping to go all out. Then, all you need to do is follow accounts that have the same profile picture as yours.

As you begin to follow more people on the platform, the idea is that you will also receive a significant number of followers in return. That's typically how these cults have worked in the past, and it's generally led to increased follower counts across TikTok. You may not want to see videos from all of your new follows, but that's a problem you can deal with another day.

Although the Ghostface Cult may seem like a totally distinct phenomenon, but it's actually just the latest iteration of a long line of cults that have dominated TikTok. In the past, those trends have focused on everything from anime characters to horchata, but each one burns brightly on the platform for a few days and then dies down as a new cult or trend rises to take its place.

Cults are somewhat separate from the trends that often dominate the actual videos that are posted on the platform. Both are trends that tend to burn bright and then burn out, though, and it seems like cults will remain a part of TikTok far into the future. Just like TikTok itself, the cults are probably part of the new internet reality.