An Oregon comedian found a mystery thong in his laundry. Then the last woman he’d seen told him she sometimes swaps underwear with women at bars

Tyler Dean, a stand-up comedian and designer from Portland, Oregon, says that he discovered a mystery thong in his laundry. After finding the garment, he had no idea where it came from, which led him to ask a woman he has been seeing if it belonged to her. The answer he received was so baffling that he took to TikTok and Instagram to share the story with his audience, and the post has already grabbed tens of thousands of views.

In his video, Dean told his viewers, “mystery underwear update. If you didn’t catch it the first time, these showed up in my laundry, and I don’t know where they came from, um, because it had been months since someone was at my house for no pants time.” He noted that he considered a few viewer theories, like his landlord using his place or his toddler bringing home items from preschool, but none of those seemed likely. Then he got a message from his last tryst.

He said that they had already established it wasn’t her underwear, but this time, she came forward with a confession. Dean claimed, “She was like, ‘But I do this thing where I sometimes switch underwear with other women at the bar.’ What? She was like, ‘Yeah. You know, like if I’m out and there’s a girl and she wants to go home with someone, but she’s not wearing cute underwear, I’ll just switch underwear with her.’ And I was like, ‘That is so weird. That is beyond weird.’” 

The main purpose of Dean’s update was to ask if this was normal

Dean’s followers were shocked. One Instagram user commented, “Holy UTI and STD Batman!!!” Another added, “I’m a girl’s girl but absolutely not.” A TikTok user chimed in with, “As a woman, I had to pause after that disclosure and take a moment. Because…WHAT! YOU DO WHAT! EWW! H-ll to the No!” Another commenter on TikTok wrote, “Under no circumstances would I ever switch underwear with a stranger.” Mystery underwear has caused confusion before, as when one wife found a thong in her husband’s suitcase after a business trip.

While many commenters assumed that swapping underwear is an easy way to catch an infection, the risk is more nuanced. According to STD Rapid Test Kits, a testing-kit retailer, bacterial and viral STIs such as HIV, chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis, and herpes are fragile outside the body and rarely spread through clothing, since the organisms typically die within minutes or hours on fabric.

The site noted that the more realistic risks from shared underwear come from organisms that can survive longer on fabric, including pubic lice, scabies mites, yeast, the virus behind molluscum contagiosum, and the parasite that causes trichomoniasis. The CDC notes that pubic lice, for instance, can occasionally spread by clothing or bedding, as they can survive for one to two days without a blood meal. 

To neutralize these potential threats, standard household laundering is effective if done correctly. The CDC recommends using water temperatures of 122°F (50°C) or hotter for at least 10 minutes, followed by a high-heat drying cycle. The site also advises anyone worried about possible exposure to see a clinician for a diagnosis.

Attack of the Fanboy could not independently verify Dean’s account, and the woman he described has not been identified. He is still in search of answers. As he joked in his Instagram caption, “Maybe if I put them under my pillow the underwear fairy will bring me the owner.”