this is 100% slop

Who's the face mask modeled after with those kids wearing Confederate flags? David Duke?

I think it might be Evel Knievel

they are two different masks, because this image isn't real

This image is 100% real, and the masks are the same, just from different angle.
Edit: that’s right, feed me your downvotes, even though I’ve been proven correct by the guy down below.

And they all smelled like cigarettes

In Kindergarten, I was a BLT sandwich. First grade, I was a dollar bill. Second grade, I was a mad scientist. Third grade, I was a vampire archeologist. In fourth grade, my mom died. In fifth and sixth grade, I went in the same Scream mask my dad bought me for $7.99.

the hair has a completely different shape. also check out the darth vader mask, tell me how that's real.

Headless child in the 4th row?

It's evel Knievel but you're right the face is the same for the dukes of hazard around 1980.

Bo and duke had a costume in 77 but the outfit didn't look like that.

Back then they allowed masks

What makes to say that? Sorry, I'm desperately trying to learn and I'm terrible at telling them apart.

I'm sorry for your loss, that's a crazy burden for anybody let alone a child.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/728954426/reserved-for-darlene-vintage-1979-ben?show_sold_out_detail=1

This was the Bo Duke costume in 1979

I do agree with the others that this must be a generated image though

Edit again! like others have said, the original image was run through filters. that's why it looks so wonky :)

first, look at how homogeneous it is. all the costumes consist of a mask and a shirt. every desk has an empty paper on it. everyone is looking at the camera. almost every costume appears twice. this is an all-black classroom in the early-to-mid-80's, where someone is standing at the front of the classroom with their back to the windows (no light from any wall), taking a photo with flash of kids just sitting at their (all left-handed) desks in full costume.

second, think of the context. bluntly, this photograph should not exist in a world of film cameras, because even without all the visual oddities this is the sort of thing you'd do a photoshoot for. you'd ask all the kids to line up against a wall so you could get all their wonderful costumes. this is a spur-of-the-moment shot, like you'd do with a phone today, and unless you're the teacher you wouldn't be in the spot the photo is taken from.

Edit: more interesting details:

• count the table legs. they're all different.
• also the tables are completely misaligned. like they've been placed for the photo.
• why would a smurf costume include a picture of a smurf?
• one of the evil knievel costumes has "dukes of hazzard" sewn on.
• that one kid without a mask looks like he's melting.
• back to the smurf costume, what are those pants?
• why is there a piece of cheese on one of the tables?
• the darth vader costume includes a shirt with orange fur and a picture of darth vader on it? and the kid who has presumably left for the bathroom behind the front clown left their shirt?
• *points to darth vader mask* "what's wrong with your faAaAaAace?!"

The purge comes after the binge

One of the kids is missing a head, one child has two left hands, some children don't have legs. The Darth Vader mask and shirt don't make sense visually, and you can see the same shirt repeated on the child with no head.

The desks and chairs are inconsistent, looks like there are a few different styles but they also have bits that don't connect to anything. I don't know what it was like in the late 70s but generally classroom furniture is very consistent.

Then there's something really strange going on with the shadows, like the smurf and clown have dark cutouts attached to them that could be shadow but aren't.

I can't figure out what is happening with the Disney princess mask, it looks just pasted in

Yeah, Dukes of Hazzard - it's stitched onto the shirt.

I see, thank you so much for sharing! I just need to spend more time studying them I think.

Nah. It's been around since at most 2021 (post deleted on second link, but thumbnail matches exactly). Someone's color-corrected it at some point.

Edit: comparing the two, it's been more than color-corrected. Whatever tool it's gone through (probably AI in some sense of the term) has lost information, like the brown corners of the notebooks and the head of Darth Vader.

Lol, so many of those points can be answered with: 80s.

Masks with a plastic cover shirt were a common thing. And yes they often had a picture of the character on it, and made no sense. People did take casual photos, that's not out of place.

But there do seem to be oddities, eg the table legs, so hard to say overall

Exactly correct, it predates any half-decent AI image generation. I think you're right about the masks being identical, too.

It was and is Hell. Thank God I was brave enough to choose such a life as Moses and Jesus, to be an unloved, loved child, because obviously it is the trials we undertake that make us what we are in these biological incarnations, and superpositional beings, well, we bitches ain't made living in ivory towers or the shit huts of the Earth. We need to understand the totality of the human condition to notice white rabbit (synchronicity, as Carl Jung called it; what a "burning bush" is in reference of in the Bible), to thus be of use to the Ālaya-vijñāna, that which Jesus called his Father, from which we grow, not as Atman drawn as vases from the Brahman ocean of consciousness, but at beads on the vertices of Indra's Net - that which a Roman Dodecahedron is a pedagogical object meant to teach such concepts, obviously.

I had the plastic Superman costume as a kid. It was hot af I remember sweating a lot

That's part of the costume. /s

Elsewhere in the thread, someone dug up a reddit post of the original image from early 2022 where you can barely see the darth vader mask. The image has been processed in some way that has made the mask disappear.

Photos you can smell.

the darth vader costume includes a shirt with orange fur and a picture of darth vader on it?

Indeed it does.

I agree parts of the image look wonky, which might be attributable to AI upscaling, but 90% of what you're listing here is absolutely natural for the '70s/'80s. The idea that no one would take casual pictures in those days is especially silly.

I think the image is real. However it looks like it’s been run through a couple filters to clean it up, possibly AI filters, that have really messed some if it up.

Looks like it is an enhancement of this one.

Someone shared the original! The missing head i was talking about is visible in the original, I definitely agree that it's been run through filters :)

Is that an Annabell Doll Mask?!?! WHOS IDEAD WAS IT TO CREATE THAT MASK?!

Ol' Darth has a wonky eye, I see.

Photos you can feel the sharp edge of the plastic as you stick your tongue through the little mouth hole thing

what the shit...

and it's not that nobody took casual pictures. it's that nobody would do it in a classroom.

those tools are not very trustworthy. but i agree that upscaling is likely.

The teacher could easily have done that on a dress up day, or a student, cheap portable cameras were a thing and kids would take photos of whatever with them

so what i'm learning from all the replies is that the us is an insane place. don't know why i'm surprised.