The Face of Evil

Jordan's Hitler-stache

You want to know who's sneaky and a little bit evil? Hanes!

"Of course!" I'm sure you're telling me right now. "They're a giant corporation who dumps plutonium in poor people's drinking water and uses Micronesian sweatshop labor and fosters poor body image among young girls!*"

"No!" I respond. The conspiracy goes deeper even than that. It's more shocking even than the fact that they subsidize Michael Jordan's Hitler-stache**. Hanes has done the seemingly unthinkable — they've built planned obsolescence into socks!

Now, I don't buy socks all that often. Mostly just when I'm too lazy to do laundry I wear out my old ones. But I always buy the same socks. Low-cut, white, men's, size 10-13. And every time, they're different! What that means is that I can't match them with any socks I currently own. When I lose a sock on the laundry or wear a hole in it and throw it out, it doesn't match with any new socks. It can't be paired!

Sometimes the only change is the pattern on the bottom, so I can get away with mismatches as long as I know I'm not going to be taking my shoes off anywhere. But other times, they change the style of the ankle-hem*** and it doesn't even seem to match when I have my shoes on.

The problem is there's not really an alternative, unless you want to go down some dark rabbit-hole of sock geekery. And while I embrace geekery in many forms, socks are further than even I am prepared to go.



* I have no idea if any of those things are true, but little details like "true" don't tend to get in the way of people who say things like that, anyway.

** There's a little something here to offend everybody:



*** I have no idea if that's what it's called, but I think you know what I mean.