[gyardley]

'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.

[GuiA]

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".

[Laaw]

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.

[Thriptic]

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...

[ljim4a]

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.

[dvt]

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

[maus42]

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.

[Retra]

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

[mfringel]

It does not appear that you are wondering. It appears that you are making assertions, while using the word 'wonder'.

[gyardley]

No, I am wondering.

Yes, it seems likely to me that talking about underwear color would prevent some students from using the list and those students would disproportionately be likely to be female, based on my own experiences in engineering school. But I posted what I did specifically because I wanted to see if my suspicions were correct.

[lazaroclapp]

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 list,might receive, at best, an unkind response.

[maus42]

>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.

[Retra]

How is this hazing?

[maus42]

I was commenting more the reaction the HN crowd seems to present when someone dares to say this sounds like something they would be uncomfortable with, because that's very much the same one I remember from school. Of course in school you can't downvote, but the responses and dismissing attitude ("there's nothing wrong with the practice if you're not having fun with it") are eerily similar.

[vincentriemer]

I mean technically this would be considered hazing. According to the "student handbook" of my alma mater hazing was defined as "making someone do something they do not want to do as requirement of membership" (paraphrasing here).

Personally, as a previous member of a greek organization, I find the definition ridiculous as it would qualify having prospective members study/be tested on the history of the organization as hazing.

[douche]

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"

[jessaustin]

Or perhaps, "don't wear it!"

[omginternets]

The horror.

[DanBC]

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.

[jessaustin]

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

[DanBC]

Not quite sure what's happening with the votes on this post, with some up and some down votes.

In case it wasn't clear: several US universities took nude "posture photographs" of most people who attended, and did so for decades. They took the photos in the name of science, but that science was probably junk.

That feels worse than an unofficial email list asking people what colour underwear they have on before accepting their post.

[rashkov]

Hey I voted you up. I really enjoyed the article and came back to upvote for that. My initial knee jerk reaction to your post was that it's slightly besides the point -- an interesting aside but somewhat off topic for the post. I suppose that could be why you were getting downvoted. Anyway it's super interesting, thanks for sharing