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An MIT Underwear Exposé (and Sorting Hat)

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Re: An MIT Underwear Exposé (and Sorting Hat)

#3
'Creepy' is right.

I wonder how many people refrained from using an otherwise-useful mailing list because of someone they didn't want thinking about the color of their underwear.

I further wonder if reluctance to talk about their underwear color publicly impacts different genders disproportionately.

Re: An MIT Underwear Exposé (and Sorting Hat)

#4
post #3

'Creepy' is right. I wonder how many people refrained from using an otherwise-useful mailing list because of someone they didn't want thinking about the color of their underwear. I further wonder if reluctance to talk about their underwear color publicly impacts different genders disproportionately.

This tradition plays so lightly with a taboo so mundane and it is so easy to just send a one word email ("white") to the mailing list to pass the test that I have to wonder about the state of mind of anyone calling this "creepy".

Re: An MIT Underwear Exposé (and Sorting Hat)

#5
post #3

'Creepy' is right. I wonder how many people refrained from using an otherwise-useful mailing list because of someone they didn't want thinking about the color of their underwear. I further wonder if reluctance to talk about their underwear color publicly impacts different genders disproportionately.

You could just lie, or not do it, or use an anon email, or use a MIT mailing list, or just not take things so seriously...

Re: An MIT Underwear Exposé (and Sorting Hat)

#7
post #3

'Creepy' is right. I wonder how many people refrained from using an otherwise-useful mailing list because of someone they didn't want thinking about the color of their underwear. I further wonder if reluctance to talk about their underwear color publicly impacts different genders disproportionately.

I actually do wonder how many people refrained from using this mailing list because of the underwear color requirement, because I honestly suspect it to be literally zero, and would be fascinated by any other answer.

Re: An MIT Underwear Exposé (and Sorting Hat)

#9
post #3

'Creepy' is right. I wonder how many people refrained from using an otherwise-useful mailing list because of someone they didn't want thinking about the color of their underwear. I further wonder if reluctance to talk about their underwear color publicly impacts different genders disproportionately.

It is creepy. But US colleges have done far far worse.

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/01/15/magazine/the-great-ivy-lea...

> ONE AFTERNOON IN THE LATE 1970's, deep in the labyrinthine interior of a massive Gothic tower in New Haven, an unsuspecting employee of Yale University opened a long-locked room in the Payne Whitney Gymnasium and stumbled upon something shocking and disturbing.

> Shocking, because what he found was an enormous cache of nude photographs, thousands and thousands of photographs of young men in front, side and rear poses. Disturbing, because on closer inspection the photos looked like the record of a bizarre body-piercing ritual: sticking out from the spine of each and every body was a row of sharp metal pins.

Re: An MIT Underwear Exposé (and Sorting Hat)

#10
post #3

'Creepy' is right. I wonder how many people refrained from using an otherwise-useful mailing list because of someone they didn't want thinking about the color of their underwear. I further wonder if reluctance to talk about their underwear color publicly impacts different genders disproportionately.

From one debate on bc-talk: "I'll point out that I've met someone who wanted to post on bc-talk but didn't just because they were uncomfortable with the whole underwear color thing. Also, I haven't been doing it when I post because it seemed weird to me." So at least 2.
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