People Are Tweeting That The Eclipse Gave Them Acne And, Well, Same

Like many people, I was disappointed (although not surprised) to wake up the morning after Monday’s total solar eclipse without having been granted the gift of outrageous superpowers. I did, however, wake up with about five new zits on my chin. “Great,” I thought. “My eclipse superpower is adult acne.”

But then something… unexpected happened: After a quick poll around Bustle HQ, I found that I was not the only one facing a sudden onslaught of clogged pores. And after scanning social media for a few minutes, I found even more folks complaining of the same issue.

I know, rationally, that "eclipse acne" is not actually a thing; the simplest explanation here is that we’re all just having breakouts prompted by whatever our individual acne triggers tend to be, whether it’s sweat (it’s really hot where I am, you guys), dairy (it happens), hormones (yep), or something else (acne triggers! Acne triggers everywhere!). There is no scientific evidence that eclipses have any effect on acne, whether causing it or curing it — and why would there be? It just doesn’t make sense. It falls into the same realm as the myth that eclipses can harm pregnancies: Absolutely not true. (And for the curious, while the sun itself can affect acne, it’s not as simple as “The sun cures acne!”; the science is a lot more complex than that.)

But even so, some tiny, secluded part of my brain — the part that likes to read about alleged hauntings and bananas conspiracy theories and tends to recognize patterns where there aren’t any — is thinking some very odd thoughts indeed. These thoughts are not ruled by logic; nor are they grammatically correct. They are all massively bizarre run-on sentences that look something like this:

“OMG WE ALL HAVE ACNE ECLIPSE ACNE IS A THING WHAT IS GOING ON????”

And, from the looks of it, I’m not the only one having those thoughts. And that? Is actually kind of comforting. Again, we all know that eclipses don’t cause acne; heck, most of us are probably just joking about the eclipse having potentially caused these random breakouts. And you know what? When you’ve been battling acne and oily skin your whole life (like yours truly), it’s kind of nice to know that other people are in the same boat as you. So come. Join us. We will crack jokes about eclipse acne to make our totally un-eclipse-related breakouts more bearable. It’s a good way to be.