It’s 85 degrees outside in full sun, and you’re attending an outdoor dinner party while your extended family is in town. A cornhole setup sits unassumingly on the lawn. The adults are distracted, drinking beers and figuring out which relatives want hotdogs and which want hamburgers, so the older cousins are put in charge of the little ones. 

The children come into possession of a stack of beanbags, and the game begins.

Cornhole, a game where players throw six-inch square beanbags through holes carved into wooden boards set 27 feet apart (that’s the rule, I’m sure your families are all very strict about that), has rapidly become one of the most popular North American outdoor games. The game rose to popularity some fifteen years ago in Ohio, and a 2022 estimate guessed that as many as 25 million people play the game worldwide. But why? Cornhole is a scourge to this planet. 

The sound of an annoying cornhole beanbag hitting a wooden board an apparent 27 feet away from the thrower and then sliding sluggishly along is terrible enough that the whole game should be abolished. Take a second and try to conjure up the sound. Smack! Shhhhh…

Thinking back on my childhood, there were a few occasions where I didn’t know better and gave into playing cornhole with some younger kids. On one unfortunate afternoon, my parents put me in charge of watching my three younger cousins at some kind of outdoor lawn party in the summer. Everything was going fine until they found the cornhole setup. The scene quickly deteriorated into a cacophony of grating voices screaming, sticky fruit punch spilling across the boards, and a game of catch-the-latest-kid-who-tried-to-run-away. 

Beanbags were being thrown at me and more punch somehow appeared in their icky hands even though I outlawed the substance after the previous spillage—all against a background of the sickening thwack of beanbags on wood and shh of their pathetic crawl towards the hole. Which they didn’t reach by the way, because even though the children were cheating, they still couldn’t get the beanbags in. I love my little cousins, but I was certainly struggling to draw from my well of affection for them in such a situation. End the suffering of all older siblings and cousins and outlaw the practice of cornhole playing. As soon as those haunting two-by-four boards come out, the mood of any gathering instantly plummets.

Additionally, cornhole has a sneaky affinity for appearing in situations where it just should not exist. In my sophomore year, I attended homecoming with my friends and one of their straggler boyfriends. We were all dancing and having a good time until we noticed the prolonged absence of the friend who was in the relationship. After wandering around for a while, we found them playing cornhole together. Someone thought it was a good idea to install an indoor cornhole setup at homecoming, and here was my friend and her boyfriend playing. They invited us to join them, and I put aside my dislike of the game to join for a bit. It turned out to be a terrible mistake. Us wearing heels would wobble around to collect our beanbags between throws, awkwardly holding our hands over our chests when we had to bend over and uncomfortably laughing. Every time the boyfriend would miss he would insist on spouting some excuse and laughed far too loud when anyone else missed the hole. 

Cornhole does not belong at homecoming. I did not want to be standing there, surrounded by people in fancy dresses and heels, playing cornhole. The so-called “sport” should be vanquished entirely so no misguided soul ever has the chance to set up the godforsaken boards at another dance ever again.

In addition to the grotesque scenery surrounding the game, players also look extremely stupid playing. According to the American Cornhole League, North Carolina’s Jamie Graham is the best cornhole player in the world. In the 2020 Cornhole Singles World Championship, he won the title of world champion by quite a lot, and the cornhole commentator congratulated him on a season that would go down as “legendary” as viewers watched the man collect his beanbags. 

Though this was a “legendary” performance by the best cornhole player in the world, he just looked kind of lame. He looked slightly awkward waiting for his opponent to finish his throw, a bit strange as he went in for his own and then kind of silly as he collected his beanbags in the middle of each round. If the number one cornhole player in the entire world looks silly playing the game, how do you think you look? Terrible is the answer. You look terrible playing cornhole. Don’t do it ever again, and don’t let anyone you know fall victim to the same fate.

While some would argue that cornhole can be a fun way to strengthen relationships, this is blatantly false. A romantic relationship, for example, has the potential to completely collapse after just one round of cornhole. Both partners are likely in a bad mood due to sticky kids screaming, and therefore are more irritable than usual. A fight could break out due to one partner hitting the other with a beanbag, and the fight is less likely to deescalate easily because both partners have been growing resentment toward each other throughout the game as they watch each other stupidly hucking squares of cloth at a wooden board. Cornhole destroys relationships and therefore poses a danger to our social stability as a whole nation.

The game of cornhole should be abolished. This poisonous sport endangers the mental stability of all who interact with it, and it is simply too stupid and pointless to make these risks worth it. Consider your own family: any of your loved ones could be the next victim of conniving, chilling, cloying, contemptible cornhole.