Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse...
It's like they're trolling Trek purists.
Why don't they give him a nose-ring, ear gauges, and an IDIC neck-tattoo while they're at it?
If you have to ask, you won't understand.
Cite the worst Trek Film (other than Into Darkness). That's a ringing endorsement right there.
If a character (from a species shown to be capable of growing facial hair, and indeed the character himself has done so in the Mirror Universe) having their beard grow out is all it takes to "troll" self-appointed Trek purists, then there's absolutely no reason to take anything they have to say seriously, because they are so easily triggered that almost anything could be considered to be trolling them.
Besides, if they really want to troll Trek purists, they'd just say that Spock's beard is Uhura.
You seriously think growing a beard is equivalent to making Spock a punk rocker? That's absurd. He could have just been stranded or imprisoned somewhere without a razor, or was in a coma, or was making a style choice, or a hundred other reasons.
Since you've disregarded the relevant example of Spock's brother Sybok for arbitrary reasons, and probably think Mirror Universe examples of Spock (and other Vulcans) growing a Van Dyke don't count, I suppose you'll also come up with some excuse for why the Vulcan Healer with the beard from
TAS - Yesteryear or the Vulcan Master with the Van Dyke that Tuvok visited as a child in
VOY - Gravity (both set around 2270, so within a few decades of DSC) aren't legitimate examples either.
Or when Spock decided to grow a Vulcan Mullet (Vullet?) in
TMP and be all "Logic in the front, party in the back", to express his duality as a half-human / half-Vulcan.
On the flip-side, I once grew a thick Grizzly Adams beard over the summer during high school, and my Mom declared me non-canon at the dinner table until I agreed to shave it off before school started, so there's that.
