In an illuminating study emerging from Yale University, scientists have confirmed that the single, missing sock from a pair will only appear to its owner once its matching sock has been officially executed.
“We observed a phenomenon where single, unmatched socks that had been left in the sock pile for weeks – even months – with the hopes their match would appear were thrown out mere minutes before the match was discovered,” said Lead Researcher David Fineman. “For a long time, we thought this was a coincidence. That is, until we started a lab-wide conversation one day.”
According to members of the lab, first-year researcher Hannah Reese entered one morning and remarked that she had just found a missing sock she’d been searching for for months but had just thrown the other sock away. Slowly, everyone in the lab realized the same thing happened to them, too.
“It wasn’t just an isolated incident; it was a cultural phenomenon,” David continued. “That’s when we realized there might be some cause and effect at play here.”
After years of grueling research and thousands of pointless laundry cycles later, they pinpointed the culprit.
“The socks just know when the other one has been thrown out, and only then will the missing sock reveal itself,” he continued. “It’s some sort of power dynamic or game that they’ve got going on. We’re not quite sure if it’s a sex thing, but it’s not not a sex thing.”
If this sounds like a major discovery to you, you’d be correct. It’s turning the textile industry on its head.
“So, you’re saying socks are sentient?” asked one extremely invested reddit commentator. “They have an entire inner world?”
“No,” David responded. “They have limited cognition, kind of like a bad AI. They can’t think or feel, but they definitely do know when the matching sock has been thrown out. It’s, like, the only thing they know.”
David confirmed this by performing a Turing test on a pair of socks and getting absolutely no reading at all. As far as severing this connection between two matching socks, researchers are unsure if it could ever be done.
“We’re only beginning to understand that there is some sort of communication happening there,” David continued. “We’re light-years away from figuring out how to tamper with it.”
As of press time, David was keenly watching a single sock with the hopes that it might do something interesting.
