Audio By Carbonatix
Ahead of this year’s Halloween festivities, a photo has gone viral online showing what appears to be a hyper-realistic mask of Florida’s own far-right provocateur and self-described “proud Islamophobe” Laura Loomer. The mask exaggerates Loomer’s facial features in an uncanny valley sort of way, looking almost like a real human face with unnervingly smooth skin. A tag on the product reads: “Loomer Goon.”
A handful of social media users have claimed that the lifelike mask can be found on the shelves at Spirit Halloween.
But if you were hoping to terrify the neighbors this year by dressing up as the right-wing conspiracy theorist, we’ve got some bad news: it doesn’t appear anybody is carrying the mask — not even “the world’s #1 Halloween costume store.”
“I can confirm that Spirit Halloween is not selling that mask,” Marisa Simonson, a spokesperson for the beloved pop-up retailer, wrote in an email to New Times.
Boo!
While the origins of the seemingly AI-generated photo of the mask remain somewhat unclear, it’s been shared far and wide on Reddit, X (formerly known as Twitter), Facebook, and Imgur. It made a particular splash on Reddit’s r/pics, where more than 40,000 people liked — and 2,300 people commented on — a post with the image captioned: “Laura Loomer: In stores [now].”
“Straight out of the fucking Purge,” one person commented.
“That is one of the most true-to-life masks I’ve ever seen,” another replied to the post.
“Jesus I thought it was a photo of her. [Mar-a-Lago] face is real,” someone else wrote.
Several commenters pointed out that the photo clearly appears to be AI-generated. (While we’re no AI experts here at New Times, a closer look at the image shows scrambled text on other products and costumes lining the shelves in the background.)
“AI picture unfortunately, but that would make a terrifying costume,” one person wrote.
Loomer, who has recently become a central figure in the Trump administration, made a name for herself as a far-right, anti-immigrant political activist who routinely spouts homophobic, transphobic, and anti-Muslim comments. She has claimed that “9/11 was an Inside Job!” and called Islam “a cancer on humanity.” Dubbing herself the “most banned woman in the world,” she was banned from Uber and Lyft in 2017 following an anti-Muslim online rant about their drivers.
Her comments have also led to bans from Facebook, Instagram, Venmo, PayPal, GoFundMe, and X. Elon Musk later reinstated her X account, where she now regularly posts for her 1.8 million followers.
