The Skeleton Brunch Meme Explained

As with all things, the internet doesn't usually offer up a reason for why a certain trend goes viral. (Remember the milk crate challenge, which dared people to walk up a stack of flimsy plastic milk crates?)

At first glance, "skeleton brunch" appears to be the latest craze to take the internet by storm — except that most users appear to have no idea about the trend, what it is, or even why people are talking about it. One twitter user summed up the confusion, joking: "trying to stay young and hip but worried that people will find out I don't know what skeleton brunch is."

The New York Post exposed the trend as a hoax, calling it out as an attempt by some people to "make posers look ridiculous for pretending to be in the loop."

It's easy to see why some of us might believe that the idea of hosting or attending a "skeleton brunch" is actually trending in the social media sphere. A search with the term "skeleton brunch" on Twitter yields a collection of posts, including photos of Halloween skeletons enjoying a chill weekend meal. There's a solo skeleton enjoying a mimosa, or groups of skeletons doing different things: posed before a variety of breakfast items or being served by a skeleton servant. There's even an image of skeletons ordering a round of drinks "We'd like bottomless mimosas — and a mop! *hollow clicking laughter*" reads the caption.

The New York Post tied the trend to TikTok, sharing that, while many tweets about skeleton brunch mention the social media platform, the hashtag is not actually trending there. In fact, a search only brings up older TikToks mostly related to Halloween, with a few new posts discussing the fake trend.

This isn't the first time people have been (or pretended to be) duped by a "viral" trend that turned out to be a joke. If you remember back to 2018, there was a bit of an uproar about the Tide Pod Challenge, which was mostly overblown.