Why Are Men With Beards So Much More Attractive? We Have Answers.

Who had “people thirsting after Mark Zuckerberg” on their 2024 bingo card?

Over the weekend, the internet experienced some collective cognitive dissonance after seeing a photo of the Meta CEO decked out with a beard, a glowly tan and a silver chain necklace. (Zuck...is...hot?)

“Mark Zuckerberg went from Mr. Steal Your Data to Mr. Steal Your Girl,” more than one person joked.

“It’s crazy how much a beard can change a man’s life,” another person tweeted.

Even Gwyneth Paltrow was a bit taken aback by bearded Zuck. “He looks like my ex hubs [Chris Martin] in this pic,” the actress commented under a post from The Shade Room. (Others saw a resemblance to Jack Harlow or influencer Logan Paul.)

Unfortunately for the thirsty among us, the viral pic was edited: The photo still is actually from an April 18 video Zuckerberg posted on Instagram announcing a new version of Meta AI.

A few hours after the tech billionaire posted, an X user named Mike Rundle posted a doctored pic from the announcement, showing Zuck with an added beard and a glowy Californian tan. (The silver chain was real, come to find out.)

“Me: Bearded Zuck you have to stop. Your smoked meat’s too tough. Your swag too different. Your open source LLM is too bad. they’ll kill you,” Rundle joked in his post, which has over 2.2 million views.

Nnenna B., a fashion influencer from New York City, told HuffPost she stared a little too long at Zuckerberg’s fake glow-up. Now, she’s a bit disappointed it’s a fake.

“Like he needs to go to Turkey and get the beard transplant now,” she said. “In that pic, he went from a dud to a stud. From a punk to a hunk. From ‘hiii, my name is Mark,’ to ’Sup, my name is Mark.”

It’s crazy how a little rugged scruff can change a man’s entire