Generation X understood that dress socks are uncool, but also that intentional sockitude comported well with their internalization of the age of self-expression. They also understood that no vileness of temperament was to be tolerated against sports socks with rings or tubes. It came to the Millenials to make even an inch of sock taboo. Gen Z is rebelling against this inflexible antisock dogma, the New York Times reports in the journo-come-lately fashion that implies they have already won the war.
Gen Z has already taken on shibboleths of millennial fashion like skinny jeans and side parts. Now some young people are declaring a preference for crew socks, which generally rise to midway up the shin, and thumbing their noses at the ankle and no-show varieties that are staples of the previous generation's sock drawers.
What might be just a mild generational difference in sock preferences is being exaggerated into a kind of theatrical warfare on social media. Jabs are being exchanged. Side-by-side comparisons are being posted. And some millennials are standing their ground.
Programming socks, of course, were always beyond heresy.
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