rating underwear colors in my inbox by Victor D. '27

At MIT, all of the undergraduate students share a single mailing list called Dormspam. If you send a message to this list, every single undergraduate student who has opted-in will receive your email. Now, I get upwards of 40 dormspams everyday, because there’s always something going on at this place. In order to prevent people’s inboxes from being flooded with messages from clubs, free boba, and senior sales, any message sent to Dormspam must include the following footer: “bcc’d to dorms, [COLOR] for bc-talk” (historical context here). Since then though, so-called “underwear colors” have started not to resemble colors at all. I’ve assembled a small—alllow me to emphasize—minute subset of underwear colors that have graced my Dormspam folder.

I’ll be grading the underwear colors using the following metrics out of 10: Plausibility (of whether I believe the sender was actually wearing the color at the time they sent the message), Thematicism (how thematically relevant it is), and Creativity.

 

(Disclaimer: while I have defined an objective metric, this is for fun. sorry if i dog on your unbelievable and/or basic underwear color).

 

Let’s start with the actual colors. 

Plausibility: 10/10

Thematicism: 3/10

Creativity: 1/10

classic, tighty whities

Plausibility: 10/10

Thematicism: 3/10

Creativity: 1/10

this is the most plausible to me for some reason. like i believe you, you know? no doubts raised in this mind about what the color of the sender’s underwear.

 

Plausibility: 8/10

Thematicism: 7/10

Creativity: 3/10

i wish i had read this earlier they had mango sticky rice and that’s my second favorite desert

Plausibility: 9/10

Thematicism: 9/10

Creativity: 2/10

the dormspam containing this color was sent on Lunar New Year, so it gets many points for being thematically relevant. on the other hand, this makes me wonder whether the sender merely said their underwear color is red so that they could make it thematically relevant; therefore, they lose a point.

Plausibility: 3/10

Thematicism: 9/10

Creativity: 6/10

🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈

Plausibility: 8/10

Thematicism: 7/10

Creativity: 4/10

Dormspam to resell Twice tickets. pink twice

Plausibility: 2/10

Thematicism: 4/10

Creativity: 8/10

before we move onto things that i would contend may not be colors, i appreacited this one because it succesfully adds a modifier to the color without making it incomprehensible or otherwise incoherent (see: “colorless green ideas sleep furiously”)

 

We now move on to corporate sponsorship colors

Plausibility: 1/10

Thematicism: 9/10

Creativity: 1/10

i always thought that claude (the ai thing) was red but fun fact is im partially colorblind (or, at least that’s what they tell me). i walked past a booth in Lobby 10⁠01 clubs and other student groups table here in order to advertise, get members, etc. earlier today and they asked me what the future of ai is gonna look like, so i give this 9 for thematic relevancy.

Plausibility: 1/10

Thematicism: 5/10

Creativity: 1/10

i just needed to include a couple of these samples because a lot of these colors are just [INSERT COMPANY NAME] – [THEIR COLOR] for bc-talk

We now move on to things that appear to approximate colors. 

Plausibility: 3/10

Thematicism: 1/10

Creativity: 1/10

i’m not sure what this is supposed to mean. i do not believe your underwear is “app blue” but i can concede that it may be blue—hence the few points in that category. but what exactly makes an app, blue? i’m not convinced.

Plausibility: 0/10

Thematicism: ???

Creativity: overflow error

for me, this color poses an incredibly interesting question about a color that possibly does not exist today but will exist in the future (exactly “four-days-away”). what does it mean for a color to be in this state. or perhaps just emphasizing that the color is impending and inevitable… it is a fundamentally different way of understanding what color is and could be.

Plausibility: 0/10

Thematicism: 7/10

Creativity: 5/10

i struggle to conceptualize hilarious orange but given that this dormspam was sent in relation to a stand up comedy event, i reckon they were referencing 2009 hit icon annoying orange and for that it earns points.

 

Colors beyond Colors

Plausibility: 😳/10

Thematicism: 😳

Creativity: 2/10

an extra point in creativity for nude, given it subverts even having an underwear color in the first place. however, if they were to have answered correctly, they might have had to say “transparent” or something along these lines, for nude alone is not a color.

Plausibility: 0/10

Thematicism: 10/10

Creativity: 10/10

this dormspam needs the accompanying context for its color (also, if you’re reading this, this is a preview of ellie’s upcoming blog >:) )