I was sitting in a cafe a few weeks ago when I overheard a rare bit of sunny talk about advances in medicine and technology when a woman said: “Nobody will be bald in the future.” The way she said it made me think of people in the 1950s imagining the 21st century as a world with flying cars, sassy robot maids and no wars; a world where everybody has hair on their heads is possible.

Bald has never exactly been in style, but these days, it feels like going bald is tougher than ever. It can feel lonely watching all those clumps fall out when you’re in the shower. Yes, there have been plenty of advances in hair restoration, and treatments have been proven to help some people avoid getting to the point where they need a doctor to surgically redistribute the follicles from the back to the front of their heads. But it won’t work for everybody, and people will still lose their hair as long as genetics and hormones have a say.

Those people might find solace in the Reddit r/bald community. “It’s the only thing I’ve found online that has actually changed my life for the better,” said one member who asked not to be identified because he’s still weighing whether to opt for surgery or take the clippers to his thinning mane. “Everything you see when you scroll is just people who have time and money to work on looking perfect, and they all have perfect hair.”

What makes the r/bald subreddit so great is its stated mission to “embrace bald and strive to make the world a more bald-friendly place”, and however its members tend to do that is fine with the nearly 430,000 people who have subscribed since user GeekBro27 started the community in 2011.

Users post pics of their hairlines in all different states of loss, from early thinning to such deep receding that they’re in Charlie Brown or Homer Simpson territory, with a few loose strands on top clinging to dear life.

Some will ask to “Shave, or not to shave”, while others will publish before and after shots of their thinning locks or comb-overs that make them look as if they’re trying out for a 2000s emo band, then how they look once they shave it all off.

Once they do, there are nothing but warm responses from the community who want to give the newly bald the confidence of Alec Baldwin’s Jack Donaghy character on 30 Rock (and, likely, Baldwin himself), who once said: “Your hair is your head suit.”

It’s not just lip service: all the “after” pics are better than the “before” ones. Getting rid of whatever was left on top yields great results. (Just look at the meme of George Costanza Photoshopped with a shaven dome and beard juxtaposed with a picture of Jason Alexander’s famous character for proof of how good having nothing on top could be.)

We use social media for validation too much these days, posting selfies in hopes of getting a few people to hit the heart on Instagram, or tell us how it looks like we’ve lost weight. There is some of that at play with r/bald, except with the difference that it’s people being straightforward about something we’re led to believe should be embarrassing – and the comments are always positive.

One recent post with the title “Can you let my mom know what you think?” featured a picture of a lovely looking lady with the caption: “She just started chemo recently and she had to commit to short hair quicker than she thought. She has been big into fashion and different hair styles for a long time so this is kind of jarring to her.”

The community went to work: “She looks amazing,” and “At first, without the context, I thought it was intentional because it works so well. I wondered how she knew she would look so cool with her hair short like that! And like everybody says, it brings out her lovely eyes.” The person who originally posted added an update: “holy crap guys! She is going to be floored when she reads all these comments! You all seriously rock! Every single one of you is amazing!”

That’s the general vibe of r/bald. It’s routinely one of the sweetest, most uplifting things you’ll see any given day online.

One user I talked to, Pozzy119, posted pics of himself in a tank top, holding his phone just far away from his face that you can tell he’s a good looking guy with a great beard in the first shot. In the second, he gives an aerial shot of the top, with the thinning part creating a horseshoe shape towards the back.

“I know what I must do, but I must find the strength to do it,” he posted. Less than a week later came an update: a shot of his new bare dome.

Reading it made me feel a little emotional; I’m 45, and the options for saving my thinning hair were pretty much nil when I was younger. When I was a kid, middle-aged men usually went with wigs or toupees to do the trick. Some thought that taking the couple of strands left on the top and parting it so it covered the bare spots would suffice; the comb-over is still utilized today, but its heyday has long passed.

There was something shameful about it, like they were trying to hide or hold on to something that was long gone. It told future-balds like myself that going bald was bad, and that you should do whatever it took to make people think you had a full head of hair.

Personally, I’ve always been a fan of the style guys such as Larry David rock, which some of my fellow balds like to call the “power donut”. I’m a fan, but I think it takes a lot to pull it off; I haven’t hit the age, nor do I have the panache of somebody like Sean Connery.

All this to say, it took me a long time to start shaving it all off, and I found myself resenting my friends who still had hair deep into their 30s. Hats became such a part of my daily look, that I almost feel naked not wearing one now. I wish I had something like r/bald back then, and Pozzy119 posting those pictures hit me hard.

I sent him a message telling him that I thought it was really cool that he felt comfortable saying to the world that he needed to find strength, that it showed a lot of depth and flies against the idea that guys are unwilling to open themselves up and be sensitive.

He hit me back with a “lol”, then added: “My first post was a play on the Kylo Ren ‘I know what I must do but I don’t know if I have the strength to do it’ from Star Wars VII, and then my follow-up was just playing on that too.”

That’s how long I’ve been bald, I tell him: Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace was in the works and we didn’t have Reddit. If we had, I probably wouldn’t have felt so alone watching my hair fall out.