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An MIT Underwear Exposé (and Sorting Hat)

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Re: An MIT Underwear Exposé (and Sorting Hat)

#41

Post by mayneack »

justinlardinois wrote: post #25

> Reasons for emailing all undergraduates include event announcements for student groups and departments, flame wars, and occasionally lost items. In contrast, the kinds of emails sent within a dorm mailing list include, at the top of my inbox right now, parties, house meetings, and foodmobs to restaurants in Boston; decisions about when to turn off the heating for spring, invitations to test food experiments, and a…

most are mailman or moira https://ist.mit.edu/email-lists

people just make filters.

Re: An MIT Underwear Exposé (and Sorting Hat)

#42

Post by phd514 »

noname123 wrote: post #38
leblancfg wrote: post #2

Reading this made me downright sad that I didn't, and probably never will, attend MIT. Oh, the interesting people! The interesting projects! How I wish I had worked harder.

FWIW, I never went to MIT (went to a small liberal arts college); but I work at an MIT affiliate, so by virtue of proximity and affiliation, go to talks given on campus, eat at their cafeteria, have audited classes and play basketball at their gym. But basically a third-party observer to campus culture, my subjective $0.02: The undergrad population is much to my dismay similar to any American school trained on the pr…

You're definitely missing a significant subculture that exists among MIT undergraduates. The kinds of MIT-affiliated events that you describe are certainly not the ones where you are likely to discover it. You are correct, though, in observing that not all MIT undergraduates fit into that subculture and many will go into finance, law, or medical careers. And there is certainly nothing wrong with that.

Re: An MIT Underwear Exposé (and Sorting Hat)

#43

Post by jessaustin »

DanBC wrote: post #9
gyardley wrote: 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…

One wonders whether the entire seven-page article were written solely for the sake of the final sentence.

Re: An MIT Underwear Exposé (and Sorting Hat)

#45

Post by doctorwho42 »

justinlardinois wrote: post #25

> Reasons for emailing all undergraduates include event announcements for student groups and departments, flame wars, and occasionally lost items. In contrast, the kinds of emails sent within a dorm mailing list include, at the top of my inbox right now, parties, house meetings, and foodmobs to restaurants in Boston; decisions about when to turn off the heating for spring, invitations to test food experiments, and a…

Sort all from: EC-Discuss into folder: EC-Discuss

... Try to sort through it when you are bored... Realize you don't get anything out of it anymore -> Un-Subscribe to EC-Discuss email list.

Clarification: EC-Discuss = East Campus (of MIT) discussion email list... it is known for this mass email of random nature.

Re: An MIT Underwear Exposé (and Sorting Hat)

#46

Post by icebraining »

jessaustin wrote: post #36
douche wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

18-22 year olds are all about hazing each other... It's not like you have to be honest about what you're wearing, you could say any old thing - the email list police aren't spot-checking you to make sure you are indeed wearing yellow rubber ducky underpants. I'm sort of surprised that there was not a sizable proportion of jokers that wrote-in "skidmarked"

Or perhaps, "don't wear it!"

"Commando" and "naked" are both represented :)

Re: An MIT Underwear Exposé (and Sorting Hat)

#47

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

This is the best thing.

I'm sorry, but I don't feel the need to qualify that statement. This is just one of those absolutely crazy projects that people do from time to time (although MIT certainly has a reputation for hosting a lot of them), and I love that sort of thing. As much as we talk up the importance of Bayes' theorem and other algorithms as things that can change the world, etc., sometimes, you can just build something cool, and have a laugh.

Re: An MIT Underwear Exposé (and Sorting Hat)

#48

Post by Retra »

maus42 wrote: post #28
dvt wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh come on, it's not that creepy. At UCLA, we had yearly undie runs[1]. You sound repressed. Plus, underwear color could just've been made up. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoaP9CdbvD4

You know, judging whether people are repressed or not, especially over internet, isn't very considerate. I wonder why the top comment in this thread is being downvoted so hard. I could see it being a legitimate concern for some people.

Just because it may be concern that people actually have doesn't make it legitimate in any way.

Re: An MIT Underwear Exposé (and Sorting Hat)

#49

Post by Retra »

maus42 wrote: post #30
lazaroclapp wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally think this is probably intended to be just a funny tradition (and hopefully taken in that spirit by most students, of either gender). However, I think is fair to wonder about possible side-effects. The fact that the question gets downvoted here makes me, if anything, more likely to believe someone raising the issue within MIT, or choosing to send something like "unspecified"/"E_NO_ANSWER" to the mailing…

>unkind response Some of responses in this comment thread look very much like blatant schoolyard bullying behaviour manifesting. "Why take things so seriously" "Spoilsport" et cetera ... Partake in the hazing rituals, or else.

How is this hazing?

Re: An MIT Underwear Exposé (and Sorting Hat)

#50

Post by Kadin »

justinlardinois wrote: post #25

> Reasons for emailing all undergraduates include event announcements for student groups and departments, flame wars, and occasionally lost items. In contrast, the kinds of emails sent within a dorm mailing list include, at the top of my inbox right now, parties, house meetings, and foodmobs to restaurants in Boston; decisions about when to turn off the heating for spring, invitations to test food experiments, and a…

This is exactly what filters are for and why every decent MUA has them. You just filter each list to a folder, or all the lists into a folder, and read them there rather than in your inbox.
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