Ahh, fall is in the air and with it comes longer nights and cooler temps and the season of the…turtlenecks. God help us.

Guys, turtlenecks just don’t look cool and are a very dated fashion choice. Seriously. It’s a dreadfully old, dull fashion statement that just won’t die and it’s all your fault.

Do you think turtlenecks make you look taller? They don’t.

Do you think turtlenecks make you look smarter? If you don’t mind being judged as an elitist intellectual type – because this is what turtlenecks say about you – then, yes, you look smarter you little snob.

Do you think a turtleneck makes you look trendy? Depends upon whom you ask, but the correct answer is no.

Nobody really likes them, except for maybe mothers and girlfriends and boyfriends with ulterior motives.

Looking back to days of yore, turtlenecks were only invented to protect the necks of medieval knights to prevent chafing from their chainmail armor way back in the Dark Ages. They were not invented for men to wear while singing folk music, reciting poetry, anchoring the news, playing the bongos, or eating a steak at Morton’s with Guido and Tony.

Are these modern turtleneck wearing men trying to signal to us that they are identifying as a bold, horse riding, sword fighting, mace swinging, lance impaling medieval knight with bad teeth and actually trying to subconsciously intimidate us? Granted, this is a massive stretch. Eh, on second thought, probably not.

What looks worse than an actual turtleneck? A Dickie mock turtleneck, like what cousin Eddie spectacularly wore in Christmas Vacation. I guess if you don’t have the bucks for an actual turtleneck, a Dickie is your discount fashion option, you cheap, out-of-touch bastard. Also, I don’t think a man should wear anything called a dickie because the name itself hints that a certain body part may be smallish.

The worst look of all is a turtleneck with a big, chunky gold or silver chain worn on the outside of the collar. Unless, of course, you are Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson; he’s the only one that can pull that look off. Ahem, hi Dwayne – I love your work!

Do men really wear turtlenecks to fend off a chill to their neck on a cold day? No. It’s only worn as a fashion statement, not as a practical clothing item. So, you gotta man up, dude – wear something hip like a cravat, or a neckerchief, or an ascot, or a buff, or even a keffiyeh, but wearing one of these might piss a few people off.

Or is it that these turtleneck wearing men are channeling an actual turtle in that they can retreat into their shell if frightened by, say, a snarling Pomeranian gnashing its teeth?

Do these men look in the mirror and say to themselves, “Wow, dude – what an absolutely awesome fashion statement!” Or is it, “Mom love’s it when I wear this!” This is wrong either way.

Or is it that you allow your mother or the woman or the man in your life to dress you in a turtleneck? Rage, rage, against the…wearing of the terribly bad fashion choices.

Does your girlfriend or wife or boyfriend or husband tell you that you look handsome in a turtleneck? They are lying to you through an ulterior motive which is to make you look as unattractive as possible to other people, you know, to fend off any potential competition. The same goes for two-faced lying coworkers who tell you that you look great in a turtleneck but are laughing behind your back. You’re actually being subliminally manipulated, and you should be angry about that!

Whatever the reason is that you’re wearing a turtleneck now, it’s categorically wrong. Please, just stop it.

I’ll concede here that I can only see one, ONE, possible reason to wear a turtleneck: To cover up a poorly executed neck tattoo of a red lipstick kiss that you paid $10 for when you were 20 years old and drunk in Mexico. At the time you thought that it looked like a kiss from Angelina Jolie’s sexy lips, but when you sobered up it looked more like a smeared, sloppy, drunken kiss from the lips of Mrs. Doubtfire.

I encourage everyone to dig through their closets and their dressers and grab every single turtleneck or Dickie that can be found, pile them up high in the driveway, pour some gasoline over them, and torch them. Yes, yes, set them ablaze in the ultimate rejection of a fashion style that should have died out during the Renaissance!

And suddenly, I’m getting notices from Amazon that fall turtlenecks are on sale. “We found something you might be interested in…” with a bunch of turtleneck images and links. This can only be because I had researched turtlenecks on the web, not because I was actually shopping for one to purchase. Yeah, that’s it. Apparently, the app was “listening.”

This creepy AI algorithm stuff is going way too far.

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