For fear of sounding like a grouchy Gen X-er shaking her fist at the cloud, why does everything have to be a thing?
When did lazing in bed become “rotting” and leaving work on time “quiet quitting"? When did a stroll in the park become a “hot girl walk” and autumn “pumpkin spiced latte season”? Why are unconventionally attractive guys “hot rodent men” and why is wearing a cardigan “coastal grandma chic”?
There’s a phrase for Gen Z’s love of labels. It’s called being “chronically online”. And at the intersection between chronically online and Halloween, you’ll find the boo basket.
For the uninitiated, the boo basket is a basket, box or bucket filled with sweets, chocolates and an array of Halloween-themed – how can I put this gently – junk. Plastic bits and bobs that little ones will ooh and aah over for all of 45 seconds before losing interest, and which you’ll find down the back of the sofa two months later.
The origins of the boo basket are a little murky. The internet tells me it’s a “fun custom” (although custom might be stretching it a bit) whereby you secretly leave a box of goodies on your neighbour’s doorstep for them to discover or kick over when they leave for work in the morning. This is called being “booed”.
Once received (or kicked over), it’s on the neighbour to put together their own box for the next neighbour and so forth, creating a kind of modern, pricier, chain letter in which everyone feels obligated to expend precious time and effort lest something terrible befall them within 72 hours.
Oh, and there’s more. Once you’ve been “booed”, you are required to make and hang a sign on your door saying: “We’ve been booed”, so that no one double-boos you and you end up making a lucrative sideline collecting boo baskets to sell at an autumnal farmer’s market.
To quote a famous meme: ain’t nobody got time for that.
A whole industry has sprung up around boo baskets, with online tutorials, curated Etsy and Amazon shopping lists and workshops showing how to make your own. Naturally, social media is awash with boo basket content.
At the higher end of the trend, TikTok user Lexi Hesler shared the boo basket her boyfriend gave her with her 10.4 million followers. It featured Ugg slippers, a mummy doll, Halloween motif socks and blanket (“the basis of any good boo basket”), a positive pumpkin, perfume and a small ghost toy in a plastic jar of which her boyfriend said: “I thought it was useless so I bought it.” It also included a candle of a skeleton in a bath of wax (“it kind of smells horrible, but it’s cute”), a hair clip shaped like a spider web and a ghost-shaped mug “for all my fall beverages”. Throughout her unboxing, Hesler says the word “cute” six times.
“Useless” ghosts in jars, “horrible” smelling candles. Unsustainable.
In another video, user Julianna Claire makes a boo basket for her “bestie”, containing Ugg slippers (those again), a jumper, an orange Stanley Cup, cloud socks, Reese’s peanut butter cups, an air freshener, body cream, a mug and some cookies. The Uggs alone retail for Dh640 ($175), the Stanley Cup Dh242. I love my friends, but not that much, and certainly not for Halloween.
For influencers, the boo basket has become the latest in a long line of ways to flaunt wealth and status or virtue signal their amazingness as a friend or partner. This begs the question: if an influencer performs a trend and there’s no one around to like it, does it yield any clout?
For mums and dads, the boo basket has become the latest iteration in the penchant for performative parenting. The insidious way online content has exponentially increased the pressure parents feel to meet expectations laid out by those with more time and money.
In the hundreds of thousands of videos of boo baskets showcased on social media, created mostly by women, bags are filled with sweets, crafts, clothes, toys, teddies, drinks cups, cosmetics, bath sets, candles, Sephora vouchers and more. Honestly? It’s more horrifying than any horror film you might watch this Halloween.
The message, as it always is with performative parenting, is clear: "We’re more attentive parents than you, ergo we’re better." Which the time-poor or cash-strapped parent can’t help but read as: "We love our children more than you do because look at all the stuff we’re giving them."
Oh, what a miserable hag you are for dumping all over this harmless Halloween fun, I hear you cry. To which I say: trick or treating, carving a pumpkin, dressing up as a zombie … isn’t that enough?
The boo basket is proof that nothing is safe from the relentless crawl of needless consumerism and waste for social media likes, in which every single celebration or event becomes centred on stuff rather than sentiment.
Which is why I say “boo” to the boo basket. Go haunt someone else’s doorstep.
