On Socks, Underwear and the Unwilling Consumer Rage

Searching online for things to buy is a form of torture. Well, not all things, you tell me I need a dress and oh, let’s rejoice together, I’m heading to my home planet. It’s socks. And underwear. And all those things that leave you with very little identity to express and infinite choices that feel the way Andy did in front of two very similar cerulean belts^[1]. Plus, on a personal level, it makes me feel as though I had such a wide range of possibilities that I don’t know where to look. I’m staring at a screen and yet it makes me feel like I should theorise a digital version of the Kantian concept of sublime. An infinite amount of websites gather immense, uncurated collections of socks that I’m supposed to choose from, while they present me with an existential crisis^[2]. Maybe those websites simply want us to know exactly what we are looking for. Maybe the only way to avoid a consumer headache is to be so particular and knowledgable about socks, that you go look for them in well-lit digital avenues where all you have to do is know your owns size. You wanna avoid feeling like you’re being swallowed and annihilated by the majestic digital nature? Know your shit. Any chance to come out of capitalism alive is expertise^[3]. In socks. Do you know how many minor details can differ between several kinds of white socks? Do you know that those menial particulars bully you into pretending it’s a matter of taste?

And let’s not even begin to approach the subject of conscious shopping. Everyone claims to be using recycled materials, everyone claims tu use sustainably sourced cotton with such a vehemence you would think they were being accused of slavery, but there too, you have to know your stuff^[4]. Because environmental claims are like those of the ex who swore she was only a friend. So, I have to know where, what, who and how before I even type anything in the google search bar. Or open an app. What “W” is missing to turn the experience into a journalistic production? When. Well, All. The. Time. Everything is there in every moment, your ability to buy is never interrupted nor denied and, to make matters moral, you’re very much encouraged to take advantage of that. Help the economy. Circulate.

The skincare industry, to offer a different point of view, did something clever. It avoided this mechanism completely by making the invisible visible. People take selfies with their products lined up on the shelf as if they were prizes. Glass skin, no-makeup makeup, sheet-masks, serums, the 10-step Korean routine. Those become perfomative proofs of invisible rituals, which are in themselves fetishized. Skincare turns inward labor into outward display, and socks never got that trick. Where clothes sell you self-expression, skincare sells you self-improvement, and both are performative under capitalism.

I'm not saying that socks exemplify capitalism's greed for meaningless progress better than anything else. I'm saying that shopping for something that doesn't scream “Look at me, that's who I am!”, might make you actually feel the dehumanization that being a consumer inside capitalism brings you. The cult of individualism is kind of necessary to capitalism to dull that sensation, to not make you think about it. So, for example, you buy a dress and you pick a color you like, and a model that suits you and enhances your shape, and that it will look good on your instagram photos. And you consider if it's appropriate for the occasion, and how will people find it, if they'll like it. If they'll think that you bought a knockoff, if they'll think it's expensive and assume you had a promotion. They'll wonder if you're richer than them. They'll ask themselves if you had people who helped you choose, or if you just have good taste. All of that makes the experience of buying the dress fuller, more engaging, therefore less boring, less torturous and less alienating. But with something that no one is supposed to be seeing, all those questions are gone. And suddenly you can see just a miniscule part of the mechanism behind it, even when you still have a lot of choices. Buying socks or underwear or skincare still screams at you “Look at how much you can pick from, and look at how even this can be particularized to make you feel like you're your own unique special person!”

It just gave me a headache. 100 euros after, I know what I bought will last me six months if I’m lucky, and then end in a landfill. And it doesn’t matter the price range. Expensive is not synonym with quality and never has been, despite the brain washing. But who cares about that? And what am I even talking about? I very much enjoy buying clothes and books online. So what makes socks and underwear and self care items different? Very little identity needed. If you consider the preferences based on the width of the ridges a scam used to establish non-existent coolness, that is. And we do. I know someone is gonna argue that socks can be extremely expressive^[5], but hear me out: almost no one ever sees them. Hence, the reduced importance and dopamine hit. So, two constraints: a lack of external validation (or mockery) and a limited form of expression. That is individuality chained to the wall. And if you take it away, you realise all you are is a number who uses more numbers held in a wallet to make some more numbers go up somewhere on a server. Nothing pleasurable about that. Which is why the cult of individuality is so important to the capitalist machine. You need it to justify all your actions, all your compromises, all your yeses to a system that is indifferent to humanity and partial to one thing only: production. Doesn’t matter of what, doesn’t matter if it’s an economic loss. Produce outcomes, products, progress, future. And if you stop to think about socks, make sure it’s only to pick the right ones.

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1. Reference clearly stolen by famous scene in The Devil wears Prada that lives rent-free in every philosphy student's brain. ↩︎

2. For more on this, I refer you to The Critique of Judgement and I deeply apologise for it. ↩︎

3. In case the sarcasm didn't land, let me specify: expertise is not a weapon. Capitalism wants you to think it is. It's like asking the stage manager for a knife. Have fun with your prop. ↩︎

4. Of course informing yourself is your duty, but outsourcing responsibility completely to the consumer is just another trick to make you think the world's burning because of your individual choices and not their greed. ↩︎

5. The identity of this person is left out for their own safety. ↩︎