Introduction
Fuck Beard clubs ( most of them anyway) Fuck your bearded politics, Fuck your mandatory social media posts black and white wednesdays NONCES, Fuck your, you must post in the chats messages PRICKS, Fuck your hierarchy of clicks that won’t let anyone ascend or have responsibilities and Fuck your inter chapter bitching. I’ve had enough of most of these clubs and most of its members fuck em all.
I’ve been holding this one back for a while now, and I almost didn’t write this blog up, but recently something happened that made me think fuck it, let’s do it! It seems like no matter who you meet or make friends with the loyalty of brotherhood or rising to a role of power with a lot of bearded folks takes over like a greedy rat eating the shit of a hippo. Beard clubs are a massive part of the online bearded community with some clubs promoting their own beard oils, clubs having their own merchandise and their ” cuts ” or jackets heavily buried in club patches or novelty patches they have the ability to lure you in to the clubs promoting brotherhood, loyalty, charity, family and respect. In this blog, I am going to take you down my journey with beard clubs and my experiences with them. I will not be holding back on this one, calling out the clubs, so get ready for the dark side of firebeard.
Beard clubs to me have always had this aurora of enticement around them, the ability to earn promotion and collect ranked and role patches gave me a sense of accomplishment. People from all walks of life globally that you can connect with through common interests, like beards, beard products, which then extends onwards through hobbies over time.
But there is a darkness lingering above all of those who join most clubs waiting to pour its venom into them to corrupt them and pull them into that darkness like the cult from hot fuzz… one of us !!!
The Beginning (April 2020 to December 2020)
My journey began in 2020 when I joined The Beard Struggle as an ambassador but quickly learned about their ” aetts ” which is old Norse for clans. They had a vast number of these clans from America to Australia promoting brotherhood through the marketing scheme of Vikings and doing competitions to do social media posts which were clearly out reach posts to promote products and brands. As far as I remember, I don’t think these aetts were clubs and more like clans within the ambassador world of the beard struggle that used discord as a communication platform. At the time I met a bunch of really great people in the UK North West Aett who later on turned out to be very bitchy, snakes in the grass, backstabbing and two faced people, but I am getting ahead of myself here. Coming to the end of 2020, I joined a fairly new at the time beard club called the bearded rebellion. They were a break off group from a massive probably the number one beard club in the world called Bearded Villains, the BRBC UK chapter was finding its feet and using a communication platform called LINE. I absolutely hated that app and preferred discord by miles. Whilst in BRBC I didn’t feel very welcomed at all and felt like no effort was being made, so my time there was very short-lived, and I left quickly, probably within two weeks, but I can’t remember exactly.
Around November/ December I approached a beard club called Titan’s Beard club about helping them create a UK chapter with me being the UK commander. I must admit I was so excited about this, I had gathered a few lads from different parts of the UK I knew I could trust. Before I knew it I had filled officer roles and things were looking up we just needed to recruit more, in person and online but then suddenly a rather large spanner was thrown into the works forcing us to make a huge decision, a fucking bastard wanking cunt of a dickhead decision that I regret to this day. The beard struggle had announced it was going to dissolve its Aett programme and create a beard club powered by the beard struggle company called The Midgard Viking Brotherhood. This set off a nuclear bomb within the community of beard clubs and all their founders. I remember the leader of the titans beard club telling me that all founders of the clubs out there were having conversations about this move from TBS, the idea of a beard club with huge financial backing from a global beard product company who mass produce their products was infuriating to club founders. Who have spent years raising awareness and money for numerous deeply meaningful charities around the world off their own backs. These hard-working family people who found escape from the real world problems within their beloved clubs now had to contend with this powerhouse of a club. Then the decision was made from most if not all clubs that anyone who was an ambassador only within TBS but also in their beard club could stay with some clubs even going as far as saying do not promote or talk about TBS in their club chats and rightly fucking so in my opinion it was a disgusting and insulting move from TBS they knew this MVB would hurt the club scene. Also, MVB had a by-law that stated you could be within MVB and be in other clubs at the same time, but clubs had stated that if you had to chose between their beard clubs or remain in MVB. This decision had come at a very unfortunate time for me and was a very hard decision to make, I thought about brotherhood and what it meant and even though I did not like the MVB move I chose to remain loyal to the lads I had become close with like family in the north-west aett.
The Middle (February 2021 to October 2021)
We had reached our end with how TBS ( the beard struggle ) handled its Aetts outside of America. After all, a big bulk of their profits came from America problems we would ask to be resolved would go without answer or action for longer than what was acceptable, an attitude where you were told to solve it yourself. So a coup was made via the leaders of the NW, NE, EM and WM clan leaders of the UK. In the new year we left aetts and beard struggle and created Helheims Ulfhednar which took a month or two to set up and during that time I rose to the rank of head recruiter as well as a couple of more NW lads reaching head positions in different roles. Video call meetings of the Hierarchy of the club if you would like to call it that happened regularly to discuss by laws and rules, roles and positions, social media out reach and even logo designs and problems with members. There was a lot of disagreement within these chats, and before I knew it another reason to leave yet another club presented itself in a shocking way, one of the in helheims ulfhednar it was split into 4 regions of the UK, NW, NE, WM and EM. It turns out one of the leaders of the regions who helped found and create the very club was selling unlicensed homemade mead and was going to use its profits to aid the growth of the club, this went directly against the very by laws he helped create and two regions NE and NW decided that if a leader of a club could not uphold his own by laws or rules why should others follow suit, and we disbanded and cut all ties with HU.
My Northwest lads decided to do our own thing and create an exclusive family friendly club called Ut Nord Drengr where our girlfriends joined us as well as our kids, but of course being open to any adult male or female to join even without a beard. I was head recruiter again in this club but with the lack of enthusiasm to push for social media presence and disagreement on logos and patch designs things were stale, and I sought for somewhere a bit more serious. There was also no push for charity events that was all just talk and no action, all we would do was meet up and get pissed, which you may think isn’t a bad thing but for someone like me who loved the drive to build something into something bigger. There was also personal problems that was massively effecting the clan and if I am completely honest here I was being fucked over by people I loved and trusted for no fucking reason what so ever and in the end I fucked them all off because they’re all deluded snakes. So after speaking with the lads I told them my reasons and I decided to leave UND, so I set myself a challenge and went and joined Bearded Villains.
It took me ages to join these fuckers and I had to pester to get a response online, even applying through the website page with different chapters that were close to me rejecting me joining because of my previous history with clubs. Finally, The Lake District chapter accepted me, and they used the fucking shitty LINE app which I wasn’t happy about, but beggars can’t be choosers, I was quickly accepted and welcomed into the chats and I felt comfortable, I honestly felt like I would last there in that chapter buying patches and other types of merchandise, even holding flags at a meet up and wearing a cut having photos taken with smoke bombs that I inhaled and nearly choked to death from haha! cunts! I was well looked after there but in all honesty there was something bugging me but for the life of me I can’t remember what it was now but something major happened in my life that both turned it upside down in fear of living with my mum forever and hardly seeing my kids, but this life changing transition flipped me back over as well in time standing on high ground happy as anything. During this time my enthusiasm for all things bearded died right down, and I stopped reviews, blogs, using products and being in a club, so I left bearded villain’s lake district chapter. But during my time here I learnt there was in house beef meaning members in certain chapters did not get along, members from different chapters also had beef. I will say one thing, the LD chapter did seem like they got on really well together and there were no problems to be resolved, and it was a family chapter.
Leading to the Present ( November 2021 to July 2022)
2 months after everything in my personal life had settled down and my new girlfriend had helped me reignite enthusiasm and passion for the bearded world I decided to join BRBC again thanks to Docks who gave me a push into the club. This time round I was welcomed with open arms with some of the lads even recognising me and welcoming me back and they had moved over to discord thank fuck for that! I was getting on really well making the effort with people and in the chats, making friendships beyond the club. It wasn’t long before I started learning from people within the club and who had left the club that chapters within the club itself had beef with each other, threats of violence were being made from member to member. Clicks at the highest levels of the club had been made, making it impossible for newcomers to rise above the ranks through hard work and commitment because at the end of the day if you didn’t fit the mould you weren’t rising up. Bit of a cunt move to be honest and doesn’t promote loyalty, family, respect or even integrity hahahahaha fuck off, they even took the piss out of a key member of the club who had helped the club rise from the ground up to where it is now. Taking on enormous amounts of responsibility and work load without help even though the leader of the club claims helped was offered and declined but this statement was made public so basicsally saving face ( protecting yourself from the truth ). Now the icing on the cake was when said individual dropped a nuke on the club in an epic way that fucked em up massively causing mass panic, long hours of ressurection and loss of members ( which is my favourite part ) which caused the rebellious podcast to make a special version with the leader of the club explaining what had happened but and i fucking quote him here,
“If a guy wants to leave then go ahead leave I can get 10 more guys to replace you”.
Whooooaaaaaa !!!! fucking come on man, does the word brotherhood mean anything to you, you fucking bellend! If I ran my own club and some member, officer or prospect wanted to leave I would personally message them asking certain questions trying to ask them to come back or giving us feedback on where to improve. I wouldn’t think “ah well got about 15 more new people joining tonight”. Brothers aren’t fucking numbers man they’re people, family, flesh and blood, people you’d get up at 4am after only going bed at 1am for, to drive for an hour to go help them with personal problems that are currently tearing them apart inside. This is literal proof that brotherhood, respect, integrity, family and loyalty do not mean shit to this club or people at the high level it royally pissed me off so much. I have been tackling with the possible backlash I will get for this blog but at the end of the day I post honesty here and I feel like the aurora around beard clubs needs to be broken.
The international board are a bunch of lazy fuckers who get nothing done and are all talk about implementing ideas. I’ve also heard that most people especially from the english chapter are a bunch of yes men with no fucks given towards the by laws bullying … yes fucking bullying those who do not fit their mould, disgusting! Be fucking ashamed of yourselves and give your heads a wobble.
I have had a few lads from the club asking me about why I left them and I didn’t tell them the truth but these same lads have had their own issues with the club and members since then and have all come to me asking about my current club asking to join. Some have backed out of that idea they had in their heads at the time and decided to stay, unfortunately I think that is a terrible decision by them in a club with no concept of brotherhood, loyalty and integrity with unbreakable clicks at the top. Im repeating myself here I know I’ll move on.
Present (August 2022 to present day 01/10/22)
I am currently in a family friendly club called Beard Mobb the english chapter is small, tight knit and a proper family with no bearded politics shite or heirarchy clicks. Immediately after joining and being put into a chat I was welcomed with open arms, spoken to on a genuine get to know you level. There are some humerous rules like no saying sorry because you shouldn’t apologise for who you are and I am not allowed to say christmas in the chat until after halloween haha pisstake i fucking love christmas you mobster dildos hahaha! There is no social media rules either (oh fuckinell thats one of the reasons that I left bearded villains hahaha fucking monochrome monday, black and white wednesday, flag friday…. bollocks man !!!!) Recently I had a little leave of absence from beard mobb and when I left explaining why I was told everyone respected my reasons and wanted me back. I had several messages asking if I was okay, offering support and saying I can come back whenever I want with open arms and now I am back and everyone welcomed me, proper fucking club!! They use facebook messenger as their communication platform which brings you closer on a personal level and allows you to get to know everyone as nowadays facebook is more of a personal social media page compared to your twitter or instagram platforms. But you can miss messages if you dont check the chat regularly. It has been the only club that has shown genuine support as a whole, no hierarchy or bearded politics, dedicated to beards even attending and entering competitions in the UK.
Titans Beard Club and The Berserker Brotherhood
Special shout out here to titans beard club, I love that club it was well structured and run really well and I couldn’t be more proud of my efforts of trying to get that clubs foot in the UK door. I would happily retry that whole mission again if the chance ever created itself again.
Another shout out to The Berserker Brotherhood a very exclusive and small club not related to beards and not interested in quantity but quality, everything is earned in this club. Paganism is it’s core foundation they have taught me a lot and accepted me into the fold and I am grateful for it. If you are a pagan this club of any kind this club really is for you.
Conclusion
Are beard clubs relevant ? what is there purpose ? you can argue that they are relevant for mens mental health which is a massive thing right now and I thoroughly support it as someone who has gone through all that beforehand. They can provide a secure haven of non judgemental feedback, help and support for those in need but can’t you get that from people in the community? from professionals ? family or friends ?
The plus side is when you join a good club which there are not that many of them by the sounds of it you meet some genuinely nice guys willing to move heaven and earth for you and actually do it for you, there is a drive to help communities through donations, food, clothing and money wise. There is a support network for those with vulnerable minds that can revitalise your way of thinking and get you back up and about being productive and positive. You also get to go meet up with these guys wether or not it is for a photo shoot with props or club merchandise, drinks at a pub with members and their families or going to competitions with the lads to look some amazing beards.
Negatives are you can be stuck in a rut of “good morning brothers” in every chat whilst you take your morning piss and have the hierarchy of dickheads put a message like “theres no need for people not to make the effort we see whos online and know who makes the effort” or some bollocks like that. Sorry to burst your bubble Bearded Rebeldickheads but people like to put effort into more than one thing and sometimes those things take presidence over the club, get a fucking grip man! You could also be trapped in your rank and have no role for a very long time if there are clicks at the very top the likely hood is you will never see a high role position or rank because you wont fit in with the banter or mould. If you join to make a difference make sure you ask about how often they donate or help a charity out, also dont get involved in the bearded politicis the stuff at the top of the club where decisions are made for the better of the club. It can be a major ball ache and really put a downer on what clubs are really there for.
I’ve met some genuinely nice guys who make a genuine effort but I have also met some absolute arseholes who do nothing but bum the arse of their club and their superiors without putting effort into the prospects. It is a crying shame that more people do not see this amount of toxicity in their club.
That is it for now as I sign off I just want to say if you have a problem with this blog or think this is about you it is because you’re the problem with your club and it is about you! I am not saying all beard clubs are bad I am simply voicing my own opinion of them based on my own experiences and information I’ve been shown and told from people. There are many clubs out there to join and many who run a tight ship to maintain the best standards and there are those who don’t give a fuck!
Stay safe, stay bearded, stay fire !