If you are reading this, and you identify as male, and are capable of growing facial hair (also known as *the fungus*), and have done so for more than a day or two as of this moment, and are emotionally attached to the fungus, I strongly urge you to turn back now — or be forced to reconsider your attachment to said fungus.

Beards. The scourge of man. In case you were wondering, I am indeed fully capable of growing a beard. However, I am incapable of growing a beard that looks nice, because no beards look nice. And because no beards look nice, they should be barred from all professional and social settings.

They used to be, you know. About 50 years ago, give or take a day, beards were exceedingly rare. It seems that, despite the myriad societal and cultural failures of the time, people back then really did have it right about the male face. The beards were rather aggressively spurned. Because back then, just as now, the beards were bad.

It seems that in the decades since the mid-20th century, the world’s attitudes have grown ever more lax on the subject of beards. The fungus has, quite wrongly, infiltrated every level of society.

“I hate shaving,” says the lazy modern man, who wears t-shirts and sweatpants every day and has never been taught to shave properly. “I have sensitive skin,” he moans into his half-empty bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. His girlfriend, either equally lazy herself or swept up in insidious pro-beard social trends, claims to love the beard, as it has transformed her schlub of a mate into something resembling a “real man,” whatever that is.

Darwin, who himself gave up and grew a beard because he got old and lazy and never had a chin anyway, confirmed that beards have no evolutionary purpose. Their purpose is purely aesthetic — but a bad aesthetic. Nature chose the beard, which is proof enough that nature does not always have our best interests at heart.

Yes, my friends, I am a pognophobe. You should be one, too. Beards are for imprisonment and exile only. They have no place in dignified society. Let us chase the dreaded fungus from our workplaces and our restaurants and our gathering places and our homes.