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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   2779 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for May 12, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I was recently torched and told it is a red flag to not sort and match your socks when you do laundry. I have a drawer full of the unmatched pairs and I just find a match the morning of. Is this actually a red flag or bad? Is it actually that uncommon?

It absolutely is a red flag if you are yourself accustomed to sorting and matching your socks when you do laundry.

If you do the laundry, you have to match both your own and the other person's. (And that is going to be difficult if they never do it on their own initiative. Makes also more difficult to match your own socks. Adds entropy.) If you don't do the laundry, expect to find a closet full of mixed socks, and if you don't like it that way and want to have it your way, congratulations, you have now an extra chore because you have to do the laundry.

In my limited experience, any everyday friction items like "how to organize socks" are much more important deal-breakers for a relationship than difference in political opinions or many of the "values".

I pair my socks oddly when I put them away specifically to fuck with people who think wearing odd socks is a red flag. I have yet to meet a person of substance who gave a shit. If you dress well in other respects most people write it off as an eccentricity, and then I don't have to talk to the kind of person who thinks they can psychoanalyse me based on minutia.

What was the situation you were torched in?

The trick is to always store your sock inside the other matched sock. That way, it's zero effort.

My wife wears odd socks, so if it's a red flag then she's redder than me. I at least buy my socks in bulk to ensure they are easy to pair in the morning.

The worst gift I have ever received was a set of black socks. They were nice, but each had a small embroidering that not only identified the sock as left or right, but each pair of socks had it in a different color. Now I had to sort them, as finding the matching sock in the drawer was practically impossible.

I agree with everything @MaximumCuddles said. I would just add that matching socks when you do laundry is less work than doing it later, but you have to do it now, so it's a signal you have a suboptimally-high time discounting preference. A trivial thing, by itself, but if I were evaluating if I wanted to share a life with you, I'd be on the lookout for whether this trait echoes in the rest of your behavior.

I'm not really up with the hip lingo from the kids these days. What is "torched"?

I don't think this is actually right because mornings before work are kind of dead time anyway for most people. As in, if I've got to catch the 7:45 train, for instance, if I didn't spend 15 seconds looking for a sock pair it's not as if I'm really going to do anything else with that time, so even if you add up those 20 seconds over a year I haven't actually 'lost' any time because nothing would change if I sorted the socks in advance.

More pertinently though I don't think anyone is that ruthlessly efficient with their time as to quibble over a few seconds rummaging around the sock drawer. No one here at any rate, after all we are currently on an internet forum talking about socks.

Everythings a red flag nowadays, I wouldnt put much stock into it. I wonder how the next generation of humans will even come into existence at this point.

I just have a single kind of sock. No need to pair them. Is your way bad? A little weird, but if the rest of your place is classy, seems negligible to me. If the rest is a mess, then it makes you look a shmidge worse, but on it's own, who cares?

Allow me to dissent from the group, this whole thread is kind of a fun reminder how self selected this group is.

It’s a red flag in the sense that it’s an incredibly low bar to clear for domestic organization, similar to making your bed in the morning or keeping your sink clean.

I’m a man, but I’d still take it as a sign someone doesn’t have their shit together if they didn’t go trough the rather minimal effort to bundle their socks together.

The lack of having this done signals a bunch of clustered psychological/emotional problems including but not limited to being on the spectrum, suffering depression, having poor hygiene, having poor time management skills, lack of social skills, oppositional defiance disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and on and on.

I learned to do this as a bachelor, along with folding clothes, ironing shirts, learning to cook, keeping my bathroom clean, etc, etc.

Y’all mfers need some Dr. Peterson in your life it seems to me.

You gotta admit though, it's a fun contrast between how you diagnosed someone who doesn't pre-match their socks with depression, autism, and a laundry list of other possible disorders, but then admit that you don't understand how someone can have all their underwear in the same color instead of matching it with their visible clothing.

Socks aren’t underwear, you can see them in the course of a normal day.

You can wear Superman undies for all I care, the only people who see your actual underwear are the people you’re fucking. Or your roommate if you are particularly bohemian and/or have boundary issues.

I don't know what your normal day entails, but I do not see people's socks in the course of a normal day. Also like @official_techsupport says, black socks go with absolutely everything.

and for some reason I looked into their drawers and closets and saw one type of underwear of the same color,

Also black socks fit any clothing.

Black socks are certainly the most versatile by a country mile, but I still think they don’t look very good with light brown, tan or burgundy shoes. Especially if you are wearing slacks in one of those colors as well.

Granted, not everyone owns shoes of those colors, so your mileage may vary. But I recommend owning a pair at least, for variety’s sake.

Sometimes you just don't have the time for it.

Ironing clothes, folding clothes....is just unnecessary work. Especially if they come unwrinkled from the dryer. Cooking and clean bathrooms is more essential, and I agree that they're necessary skills.

There are only 24 hours in the day, and I don't mind if a couple of low-priority chores fall to the wayside while I am doing something more important. Wasting time while ignoring chores is pretty immature though. Especially because you can often waste time and do chores at the same time.

If you have one or two types of socks, isn't not bundling better 'time management' than bundling? In the sense that you'll use less time total? A lot of standard routines are useful things that some people abandon for poor reasons, but some of it is just ... I do it because it's the right thing to do, which I know because other people would think poorly of me if I didn't do it, which they do because they know it's the right thing to do, which ...

Comparing these small-scale norms to those of historical cultures, or cultures of the less-westernized parts of the world, indicates how arbitrary a lot of it is.

Also, a young man, especially e.g. a college student, who organizes their clothing suboptimally probably isn't depressed/ADHD/spectrum.

Sure, if you have only one or two types of socks it makes sense, but having only one or two types of socks is actually kind of a compounding signal.

I’m not exactly a fashionista but I have several types of athletic socks alone; short & thin athletic socks, long & thin athletic socks, long & thick athletic socks, socks with threading, black ones, white ones, multicolored ones.

Not to even mention the different styles and colors of dress socks I have. Which if you are matching to different colors and styles of business casual or formal wear is a necessity.

Even at my poorest I didn’t have that little variety of clothing. Besides, on this forum I sort of doubt it’s a poverty issue, I remember the poll we did back in the old place and people here are mega wealthy, I think I was literally one of the poorest people on the forum. Half my shoes I’ve bought second hand or on clearance.

If I walked into someone’s home and I was pretty sure they weren’t poor or a cultist or a religious fanatic, and for some reason I looked into their drawers and closets and saw one type of underwear of the same color, two types of socks, a closet with only T-shirts and jeans, only one pair of athletic shoes, and so forth, I’d certainly feel some sort of way about it.

And I’m a heterosexual man.

Look, you're allowed to care about the clothes you wear. Where it becomes a dick move is when you start looking down on others for not caring as much as you do. Lighten up.

I dunno, man.

All I’m saying that outside a handful of situations, having a very limited variety of clothing is highly unusual.

Not something I thought would be particularly controversial, but there you have it.

If you met someone who got about half their calories from chicken nuggets, you’d think it’s weird too and you wouldn’t be wrong to feel that way. The situations are not entirely analogous but while they aren’t in the same ballpark they are definitely in the same sport.

I think folding them after getting them out of the laundry helps maintain their softness and scent. Putting them together and inverting the heel (to make a ball) takes less than a second.

I purchase high quality socks in bulk from Costco and only have one type. Specalized socks are stored together because finding them separately would be a bitch.

It does seem like a pretty low effort way to keep organized.

If that is a measure of having your life together then I must live in squalor.

I don't match them at all on a normal day. It's quicker and celebrates the individuality of each sock. I would think it a red flag if someone took exception to this practice, that would mark them as a blind acolyte of Order in my book.

That’s a good way to phrase it. It’s maybe 40% I’m lazy and 60% I think finding a good match for a sock pair I like is a very tiny but nice part of the morning

I date a girl who doesn’t bother, even with the finding a match later part. So…

I don't think it's a red flag or uncommon. But it's a lot easier for me to pair my socks when folding laundry than when pulling them out of the sock drawer. The easiest way to pair them is to fold them together at the top like this:

https://img.thrfun.com/img/002/062/pair_of_socks_m.jpg

I just make sure to always buy loads of pairs of identical socks, and I replace them all at the same time, so I don't have to worry about that shit.

I just have a ton of these

https://darntough.com/products/mens-merino-wool-the-standard-mid-calf-no-cushion-lightweight-lifestyle-socks

In black. They work for everything. I bought a bunch of pairs a while back, haven't worried about it since.

Assuming you mean "red flag" as in "a sign this person is bad news and you shouldn't be around them, no it's not a red flag. If anything, I would say that it's a red flag to believe something so trivial is a red flag.

I also do the same method you do. Granted my socks are 95% the same, so there's no need to match unless I'm wearing dress socks. But when I need socks I just grab two matching socks from the drawer.

I have 95% dissimilar socks, but don’t mix and match. I also have maybe 30 pairs by now? Don’t know if that’s relevant or not.

"torched"? "Red flag" in what context? If a member of the opposite sex, well, you gotta do what you gotta do. Most other contexts, I'd calmly ask why they thought it mattered.

I match my socks most of the time, for the record.

It was compared to having velcro shoes type flag

Honestly that’s harsh but fair

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