Mark Zuckerberg with Beard and Chain

Submission 4,952

Part of a series on Mark Zuckerberg. [View Related Entries]

About

Mark Zuckerberg with Beard and Chain refers to photoshopped images of Mark Zuckerberg made to look like the tech CEO has grown a beard and longer hair. The photoshops are based on screenshots from an Instagram post in mid-April 2024 in which Zuckerberg appears wearing a blue shirt and chain. Memes about Zuckerberg's new fashion choices revolved around jokes that he no longer resides in the uncanny valley and that he has entered his fuckboy era.

Origin

On April 18th, 2024, Mark Zuckerberg posted a video to his Instagram^[1] page @Zuck to discuss the release of Meta AI. The video showed him donning a chain and a blue long-sleeve T-shirt, gathering over 120,000 likes in a day (seen below).

On April 18th, X^[2] user @flyosity posted an edit he made showing Zuckerberg with a beard. The post was titled, "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 / Bearded Zuck," notably referencing the You Smoke Too Tough, Your Swag Too Different meme and gathering over 22,000 likes in a day (seen below).

Spread

The image spread online over the following day as it was discussed and used in memes, with an anonymous 4chan^[3] user posting the image to /fit/ on April 18th, 2024 (seen below, left).

Also on April 18th, X^[4] account Pop Crave made a post that read, "A fake image of Mark Zuckerberg with facial hair is going viral.," gathering over 18,000 likes in a day. The post received a reply from X^[5] user @mihailo____ showing a further photoshopped and yassified version of Zuckerberg, gathering over 1,000 likes in a day (seen below, right).

On April 18th, 2024, X^[6] user @AutismCapital made a post comparing an old photo of Zuckerberg with the bearded Photoshop, writing, "From steal your data to steal your bitch 😂," and gathering over 50,000 likes in a day (seen below, left).

Also on April 18th, X^[7] user @buccocapital posted a comparison of bearded Zuckerberg with an older photo, writing, "Who is running the Zuck PR campaign to rehab his image? They are putting on an absolute clinic" and gathering over 33,000 likes in a day (seen below, right).