Sock length divides the nation, creating identity crises in 30+ demographic

How to align your age with your sock height

Listen to an audio recording instead of reading this post if you’re too busy ripping through your sock drawer trying to find socks that won’t make you look over 30:

“No-show socks are disgusting,” croaks Patrick, a 25-year-old man who is wearing long white socks with two 80s-orange horizontal stripes and a very flimsy white tank top that reveals most of his concave chest and swallows all of his exceptionally tiny peach-colored nylon shorts. More fabric covers his sun-deprived flesh from the top of his shins down to his strategically tattered Chuck Taylors than the tank top and the shorts combined. Patrick has one of those inexplicably popular haircuts where the top and back are floofy, and the sides are shaved — it’s as if a mullet and a crew cut had a disappointing child. “I see people in no-show socks in Barry’s, and I’m like, do you have a mirror? Are you trying to be repulsive? Were you born in the Great Depression? The first Great Depression, I mean.” The height of one’s socks has suddenly become the dividing line between people who are young or obsessed with feeling like they look young and people who are not young and just DGAF.

There was a time when crew-length socks (socks that extend to the middle of the shin) were appropriate only for an 80s party or a sock fetish party or an 80s sock fetish party. Thanks to the whimsical, dictatorial fashion oppression of Gen Z, these long performative socks are suddenly appropriate for everyday occasions, like watching TikTok videos at the gym, going to your office job once a week to complain and stock up on free snacks, or explaining your pronouns to your parents’ friends at their very conservative country club in New Jersey. Socks that hide below the top of a shoe or peak out just above it are now the leading indicator - along self-awareness, the use of an “inside voice,” and the absence of facial piercings - of being born prior to 1994.

“I feel like I have whiplash,” says Jessica, a 31-year-old who works for an eCommerce startup in LA that in 2022 raised $12mm at a $120mm post-money valuation and now has 4 months of remaining runway. “Like, yesterday everyone was in no-show socks or like those socks that stick out of tennis shoes just enough to show that you’re wearing socks and not a homeless meth addict, and today everyone is running around in these chunky long socks that make you look like the nerd in every single rom-com ever made. I don’t understand how this is a thing, and I don’t know what to do.”

While some people have been crippled by this shift, others have profited.

In the two weeks since the Wall Street Journal published its bellwether article, Sergei Kemchiuk started a business that upcycles discarded no-show socks into sock extenders that are worn above no-show socks, which give the appearance of being on-trend without violating the paradoxical, hypocritical Gen Z trend of not buying new clothing in order to buy into new trends.

“I see everyone losing shit about having only shitty small sock and needing to buy big fucking fashion sock, so I say, Sergei, here is bajillion dollar opportunity,” says Sergei. Sergei’s sock extenders, called Shin-2-Win, are available DTC in unisex sizing, come only in white cotton with two 80s-orange horizontal stripes, and retail for $80 a pair. “Because you are only wearing on shin, you don’t has to wash, like pants. Is very easy.” Sergei is now ranked 341 on the Forbes 400 list of the wealthiest people on the planet, having tapped into the $80 trillion market for products that help people to not feel as old or unattractive as they actually are and still appear to be despite the money they spend on youthful products.

For those of you who understand that sock length is now the single most important issue facing the developed world right now, here is a simple guide to help you decide what to put on your feet. Simply identify the description below that most closely aligns with your identity, and be inspired by the sock mood board.

You are a 17 - 27 year old in Bushwick, Bed Stuy, Haight-Ashbury, Silver Lake, or Echo Park with them/them pronouns, more than 4 piercings, as many purple vapes as you have cheap oversized vintage sunglasses, a degree in something that no one has ever heard of, and a very large tattoo that would take you longer to explain than the waning Adderall in your bloodstream would allow. Your style identity is based on giving people the false impression that you DGAF and you just wear whatever you want, which is of course based on what everyone else you know is wearing. Here is your sock mood board:

You are 27 - 29, work remotely in account management for a tech company, and are having a complete meltdown about turning 30, at which point you will no longer appear in dating app searches or be visible in the dive bars where you have met each of your past open non-relationships, which have ended after 5 months of mediocre late-night sex, text message waiting games, and confusion about the rules of the relationships. This is your sock mood board:

You are between 30 and 40 living in a city where you are often forced to interact with people who are younger than you but not so much younger than you that you can play the older-and-wiser card. The 5 to 15 years that you have on these younger people gives you no such advantage, because these slightly younger people in much longer socks DGAF about your incrementally greater life experience or skills and just think of you as someone who is pathetically past their prime, but you would like to be considered by these people as tolerable, mildly relevant, and maybe even fuckable. This is your sock mood board:

You are over 40. This is your sock mood board: