People Are Still Very Mad About the Man Bun

Racked is no longer publishing. Thank you to everyone who read our work over the years. The archives will remain available here; for new stories, head over to Vox.com, where our staff is covering consumer culture for The Goods by Vox. You can also see what we’re up to by signing up here.

As long as there are man buns, there will be Man Bun Rage. This became apparent over the weekend, when the New York Times published its usual years-late trend piece on the hairstyle's prevalence in Brooklyn (to be fair, the piece was about how man buns are not only a thing but still a thing, and that now they're just as popular on Park Slope dads as on fashion dudes). In it, nine men found on the streets of Williamsburg talked about theirs, including one that created an Instagram account devoted to his beard and one who said, "I'm really judgmental when I see someone with a beard and this hairstyle as well. I kind of size them up and figure out who has the better one."

And because anything having to do specifically with hipsters (and late-adaptor hipsters) has a curious ability to illicit rage, the response to the Times was unsurprising. Pulling from its Facebook comments, the paper published a new article this morning of reader's reactions to the story, including one who said, "I want to walk around Brooklyn with a pair of scissors and snip off every man bun I come across," and "'Please notice my man bun! Without it I'm as interesting as a carton of spoilt milk.'"

Perhaps one day we'll be living in a world where the man bun no longer has the power to launch a Facebook comments section so belligerent, but today is not that day.