On the subreddit r/bald, the second-most-popular post of all time is a three-slide transformation. In the before photo, a man in a white T-shirt with thin, disheveled, chest-length hair stares through his glasses into the camera. He is almost smiling, the way you might almost-smile at a neighbor who knocks on the door to tell you they just backed into your car. Photo two is an aerial shot of this nervous man’s scalp, which reveals that his hair is not just thin, it’s falling out. 

In photo three, the nervous man transforms into a confident, grinning one, the setting sun reflecting off his now-bald head. “It was time,” the caption says, and the more than 5,500 commenters agree. “Their eyes always shine afterward,” one person wrote. “You went from 3rd basement IT support straight to CTO with corner office on the 50th floor my brother,” another said. Or, as a different person put it: “He now hot as hell!” 

Despite being a member of the r/bald community for years before the fateful Thanksgiving Day when he finally decided to shave his head, Dr. David Barr was not expecting this reaction. In addition to the six million views and thousands of comments he got overnight, Dr. Barr, who was on the verge of dating again after a divorce, also got a bunch of DMs, ranging from the simply supportive to the “very racy and sexual.” “From both men and women,” he says. “It was equal opportunity objectification.” The response gave Dr. Barr the confidence to go back on the apps, where he says some people he went on dates with recognized him from the viral post. “Definitely a surreal experience,” he says. 

This type of effusive support for anyone who decides to embrace their hair loss is par for the course on r/bald. In the subreddit, there are two main types of posts: People asking if it’s time to shave their balding head (usually the consensus is “yes”) and the people, like Dr. Barr, who’ve taken the plunge. For a space on the internet in 2026, the energy is unbelievably positive. 

These good vibes are curated by the moderator, a bald man who wants to be identified by only his Reddit username, Geekbro27. He started r/bald about 15 years ago. “It was just a therapeutic way for me to take ownership of the fact that I was bald,” he says. Now, he’s reaching his 20-year baldiversary. 

He started posting regular features, like Bald Guy of the Week which featured bald celebrities and athletes. Geekbro27’s goal was to help other people realize, “Look, this isn’t an end all event for anybody,” he says. “Don’t take this as a negative.” 

According to the American Hair Loss Association, approximately two-thirds of all men will experience some degree of noticeable hair loss by the time they turn 35. By age 50, 85% of them will have “significantly thinning hair.” For women, noticeable hair loss is less common but still quite prevalent: Studies have found female pattern hair loss will affect up to 40% of women by age 50. While genetics play a huge role, certain diseases, medical treatments, hormone changes, and styling practices can also cause hair loss. 

Even though hair loss is so common, anyone experiencing it is often on the receiving end of unsolicited advice on how to treat it. Cam Boyd, a 34-year-old from Vancouver, tried a long list of medical and DIY treatments to reverse his hair loss. “I kept the Rogaine routine up for about a year and a half and in that time I received exactly one positive comment about my hair…from my brother,” he says

In his early 20s, he joined /rbald in search of answers to his own questions about balding. There, he wouldn’t have found any treatment recommendations, because this is explicitly banned in the community. (In Geekbro27’s words, “you don’t go to a baseball forum to talk about football.”) Instead, Boyd gained the confidence to embrace being bald.

“I can’t date exactly when my attitude changed, but I know exactly what caused it,” he says. A commenter in the sub pointed out that being bald is timeless, since it’s a look that’s been around for as long as men have had hair. Plus, it’s a way to slow perceived aging. “If you don’t have hair, you don’t gray,” Boyd says. “If you don’t have hair, you’ll have the same style 30 years later.” That plus a general feeling of acceptance around balding was enough to convince him to start shaving his head weekly. 

The supportive atmosphere in the sub is aptly summed up by a frequently-posted meme: two smiling bald men facing the camera with their hand on the shoulder of a balding man as if to say, “Your time has come and we’re here to guide you through it.” Users are quick to edit it to fit the moment; when Playboy posted a callout in the subreddit for this story, the bald men got bunny ears almost immediately. 

“It does the role of ‘a picture is worth a thousand words,’” Geekbro27 says. “If you show that to anybody, they’re going to get the idea of the community right away.” His favorite r/bald post of all time is a real-life recreation done by three friends, two bald and one balding. 

Even with all that support, and the many testimonials encouraging it, shaving your head can be an intimidating experience. “I was so scared to do it and I thought I was going to look horrible,” says John D, 38. “My head wasn’t the right shape. It was going to look stupid. I was going to look like I was either trying too hard or not hard enough.” After he saw that pretty much everyone who posted a transformation looked better in the after photo, John decided it was time—and went to the subreddit to figure out what tools to use to shave his own head. 

When Felipe Gurgel, a 32-year-old clinical psychologist from Brazil, first saw a post from r/bald—a stream of compliments under a photo of a balding man asking for advice—it caught him off guard. “It really took me some time to accept that something spontaneously good was happening on a social network,” he says. Now, as a full-blown member, “I often cry reading the stories as they show how powerful acceptance can be.”

The subreddit’s growth was slow at first. It hit 20,000 subscribers nine years ago and grew to about 140,000 by 2024. Then, CNN published a story about the community and more people flooded in; at the time of writing, it was at 327,000 members. Now, you can find many videos on other social platforms of people gushing over how wholesome the subreddit is. 

Michiel Van Laeken, a 38-year-old from Antwerp, stumbled upon the subreddit after about a year of debating whether or not to shave off his own thinning hair. After seeing all the positive reactions to other transformations, Van Laeken took the plunge. “I truly believe that without this sub, I would still be on the fence about it, but these people really gave me the confidence to go for it,” he says. A week after he posted them, his before and after photos had over 3,000 upvotes. 

Geekbro27 prefers to remain anonymous, though it’s getting trickier as the subreddit gets more popular. “Over the holidays, my sister-in-law was like, ‘Hey, have you heard of r/bald?’,” he says. 

By Geekbro27’s estimate, the sub’s members are about 75% men, down from the 90% he would have estimated a year ago. “Some of [the women are there] because they like the outcomes,” he says. “There are some PG-13 statements going on.” 

Other women, like Laura, 30, are there on their own hair loss journeys. She started doing radiation treatment for a brain tumor in the spring of 2025 and joined r/bald at least partially for inspiration. “Before my first surgery, I had waist length hair,” Laura says. “It was really hard to come around to short hair, let alone no hair.” It took her a while to shave her own head, but once she did, she says she had fun with the buzzcut. “Literally everyone looks hot with a shaved head,” she says. 

Tracy C., a 51-year-old woman from Minnesota, agrees. She has scarring alopecia and finally decided to shave her head in early 2026. The comments on her before and after post were “so positive and overwhelming.” She says her favorites were other women saying she had given them the courage to do the same. “Bald can definitely be beautiful,” she says. “It’s a very individual journey but it’s so great that there are people from all over the world ready to embrace you and build you up for being able to let the hair go.”

Laura’s treatment is over and her hair is growing back, but she still follows the subreddit “because it’s just such a kind and lovely presence on my feed.” “It’s just nice to see people turning something that could be (and often is) really difficult into something sexy and cool and welcoming,” Laura says. “You’re not losing your hair; you’re gaining membership into this fun club where everyone is nice to each other.” 

Members love that it’s a mix of people who are balding and their supporters. “It isn’t just an echo chamber for balding men to pat themselves on the back (which in itself would be amazing) but it’s also full of women who love seeing the transformations and are fully supportive,” Dr. Barr says. “It makes it feel like a real place with real people rather than a sad men’s club.”

Whitney, 39, likens the atmosphere on early-aughts message boards. “As a fat woman I found a great sense of community online years ago with the PSW [plus-sized women] group on SuicideGirls,” she says. “It was a very similar vibe; positivity, advice, everyone posting selfies and gassing each other up.” When Whitney posted her own before and after on r/bald, she cried at how nice the comments were. 

Especially now that the rest of the world is starting to discover r/bald, Geekbro27 confirms he does a lot of moderating to keep the vibes right. There are five rules on the front-end (no bald-bashing, treat the hair-headed ones with kindness too, etc.) plus some additional guidelines he’s implemented for the auto moderation tool on the backend.

There are some exceptions to the rules. For instance, there’s no cursing allowed, so those words automatically get censored. “It’s a bit extreme, but it’s a necessary evil,” Geekbro27 says. However, he reviews everything—about 50 comments a day—“because the auto mods can’t detect context.” “Fuck cancer,” for example, is a phrase that comes up often and gets to be an exception to the swearing rule. 

“Most people who did take the plunge realized that their life got significantly better afterwards,” Mooga, 39, says. Any lifestyle adjustments people have to make after going bald are typically minor inconveniences. “I knew that shaving my head would mean my head got cold in the winter but I still wasn’t ready for it,” Brent Summers, 35, says.  

Still, some folks who shave their heads don’t encounter the same overwhelmingly positive responses in real life. “I still find myself self-conscious and wearing hats a lot of the time,” Tyler Lamph, a 35-year-old artist from Utah. “When I first shaved it…I constantly had people cracking jokes and making fun of my shaved head.” He says he misses his hair and has started taking minoxidil to see if he can treat his hair loss instead. 

As a rule, however, most of society has become brave enough to admit that bald people are hot. In his 20 years of being bald, Geekbro27 has felt the shift away from being seen as the punchline in a “guy’s toupee flies off” scene in a movie. (However, Larry David-style partial baldness is not so chic. “I wouldn’t be able to treat myself seriously if that’s how I looked,” Geekbro27 says.)

The gleeful reactions people post after finding the sub are reminiscent of the mood around Heated Rivalry. People, perhaps especially women, are desperate for any representation of positive male interactions. It’s masculinity minus the toxicity; arguably proof that men would be less lonely if they just complimented each other more often. 

For Geekbro27’s part, he’s happy for the attention. The reactions online are “the funnest part of this entire journey,” he says. “It’s flattering to hear such kind words about something I’m a part of.”