It started with Amazon making a shot in the dark recommendation to add high socks to a c programming book.

It stuck because there's a (perceived) high prevalence of trans women in high-skill IT professions and hobbies.

TBF, as someone who frequently wears high socks and stockings as part of my regular attire, I don't think they're particularly normal. In order to even be able to see that a person is wearing thigh highs as opposed to tights, it's necessary to wear a fairly short skirt or shorts, which may not be appropriate in many contexts — and if they're worn with an outfit where you can't see that you're wearing thigh highs, then wearing tights appears to be the more practical options.

Plus I have known a lot of people who wanted to be the kind of person who wore thigh-highs, but became impatient with them frequently rolling down. Wearing a suspender belt is a good solution for this, but it's surprisingly hard to find ones with clips that are robust enough to be useful and not excessively fiddly — most people I have known who have experience with suspender belts know them only as an inconvenient but sexy piece of lingerie, rather than a pragmatic undergarment (which can also be sexy, but they actually exist to serve a function rather than their entire purpose being the sexiness)

So yeah, I would say that people who wear high socks aren't normal. But I certainly don't see that as a bad thing — in fact, seeing someone wearing thigh high socks immediately makes them more attractive to me (as a friend or otherwise)

Yes, absolutely. Entirely off the rails, alien, utterly incomprehensible.

Pretty sure he meant "normal" as opposed to "programmer" XD