Playoff Beard - Outside of Sports

Outside of Sports

• Male students at some universities in the United States, Canada, and Sweden have also begun to sport an academic variation on the playoff beard - not shaving between the period when regular classes end and their last final exam.
• In computer- and videogaming circles, there is also a similar phenomenon known as a release beard; when waiting male gamers stop shaving for an arbitrary amount of months prior to an anticipated title's retail date. The normal practice is then to go buy the game, return home, shave with a sense of great satisfaction, and get to playing. The release beard is obviously a predominantly male gamer phenomenon, but there have been cases of gamer girls growing release 'pits, abstaining from shaving their armpits.
• In 2010 game programmer and staff member "Mr. Insane" of virtual pet site Neopets, grew a beard throughout the duration of the lengthy 'Faeries' Ruin Plot', which ran from Autumn 2010 to Midwinter 2011. One day he began shaving the beard, but was stopped partway through by another staff member. He had to continue on with a half-beard until he completed coding the plot to the end.
• Edsger W. Dijkstra and Jaap Zonneveld agreed to not shave until they completed the Electrologica ALGOL 60 compiler.