Beards are quite popular these days. And even though a good chunk of women aren’t that into them, the men who have them are proud of their facial hair—so much so that they often show them off on social media.
One of the strangest Twitter threads features multiple men with good-sized beards photographing them from below. A guy named Dan (@ehdannyboy) started the thread with four photos of beards from the chin up: “Men with beards looking upwards for your viewing pleasure. Don’t say I don’t give you anything,” he captioned the post.
The result is a little bit unsettling. Some of the faceless photos remind us of the muppet Beaker. And the guys’ ears often look weird from that angle.
Each photo is unique. Some of the men look like trolls without faces. Some of the beards are groomed, while others are wiry or just a little bit of stubble.
The post has received over 115,000 likes and 44,000 retweets since it was posted on June 2, proving Dan is not the only person who’s into the strange beard perspective.
“I made the mistake of trimming last week. I have nothing but regret,” noted Twitter user Kieron Gillen, who posted a photo of himself from the chin up and a tree in the background. His photo is hard for the brain to make sense of, at first.
Before long, people started embellishing the beard photos by drawing faces on the necks.
One photo features a guy with dreadlocks, resulting in a really creepy image. “I thought there was a tarantula around his neck,” commented Twitter user lazy Congress.
People couldn’t stop themselves from contributing to the thread: “HAHAHAA! This is amazing so I had to try it, too. I knew I grew a beard for a reason,” noted a man named Westin Church.
This unusual selfie craze is not new. The hashtag #BeardsFromBelow goes back to at least 2016 when men proudly displayed their facial hair from the odd angle on Instagram.
Studies have suggested that men with beards are perceived to be stronger and more aggressive than their clean-shaven counterparts. Biologically speaking, these more dominant men have more opportunities to mate because they intimidate the competition.
It’s unclear whether these upside-down beard selfies have the same effect.
