Not since 69 has a quantity precipitated this a lot disruption.
“6-7,” pronounced “six-seveeeeen,” is haunting faculty halls throughout the nation (together with South Park Elementary), making it the Gen Alpha nonsense phrase of the second. Kids are shouting it in school rooms when a trainer turns to web page 67, when lunchtime is 6 to 7 minutes away or for no reason in any respect.
“It’s like a plague — a virus that has taken over these kids’ minds,” mentioned Gabe Dannenbring, a seventh-grade science trainer in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. “You can’t say any iteration of the numbers 6 or 7 without having at least 15 kids yell, ‘6-7!’”
It’s a joke and not using a punchline (or a setup, for that matter). 6-7 means nothing, however utilizing it can make a pupil really feel like a member of a much bigger, cooler group of their friends.
“It becomes a language game to them that, it would seem, only folks in their group know how to play,” mentioned Gail Fairhurst, a University of Cincinnati professor who teaches management communication (and Gen Alpha converse).
Skibidi toilets and rizzes come and go. 6-7 is probably going destined for the slang graveyard quickly, now that adults are speaking about it a lot. But there’s one thing virtually profound about its infinite interpretations, its refusal to be outlined.
“I think that’s part of what upsets people about it, and I think that’s part of what people like about it,” mentioned Taylor Jones, a linguist and social scientist.
There might be no coherent rationalization for 6-7, however right here goes anyway: The quantity seems within the refrain of “Doot Doot (6 7),” a viral song by the Philadelphia rapper Skrilla. (In Skrilla’s case, in accordance with Jones, 6-7 is probably going a reference to the 10-67 police code, which is commonly used to report a dying.)
In December 2024, across the identical time “Doot Doot” began taking off, highschool basketball phenom Taylen Kinney appeared to create a gesture to accompany the phrase. In a clip shared by his Overtime Elite staff, Kinney’s teammate asks him to price a Starbucks drink out of 10.
“Like a 6 … 6 … 6-7,” he says, including an indecisive gesture, as if he have been weighing two choices in his palms.
Shortly thereafter, Kinney began incorporating the music and gesture into his TikToks, the place he has over 1 million followers.
The music began showing in sports highlight reels, together with these for Charlotte Hornets level guard LaMelo Ball. (He stands at 6 feet, 7 inches, natch.) Ball doesn’t seem annoyed by the memes but, however the NBA season hasn’t formally began, so there’s nonetheless time.
A face of 6-7 emerged in March, when a video caught a younger, overexcited spectator at an novice basketball sport shouting “6-7!” with the accompanying hand gesture. He turned the embodiment of that annoying classmate who can’t cease spouting nonsense phrases. Somehow, the web determined this stereotype’s identify was Mason — and thus, Mason 67 has grow to be one other inside joke. (This “Mason” character has since grow to be an icon of on-line analog horror, per Know Your Meme, however that’s one other story.)
So, if a child makes use of any of the above explanations while you ask what the heck 6-7 is, they’re in all probability proper. But most kids don’t even know the place it got here from, Dannenbring mentioned.
“Nobody knows what it means,” he mentioned. “And that’s kind of the funny thing about it.”
Its meaninglessness is partly as a consequence of what Jones calls “semantic bleaching,” the place a phrase is divorced from its unique context and involves imply one thing totally totally different (or, on this case, nothing).
Using 6-7 comes right down to a willingness to have enjoyable, Jones mentioned: “Do you have a little bit of whimsy? Or are you a party pooper?”
Sure, it’s nonsense, however 6-7 serves a crucial social operate. It’s a shibboleth, or a phrase that signifies that one belongs to an “in” group, Jones mentioned. People who don’t say it or get it are on the outs. And what child doesn’t need to belong?
“Language is a way for people to form community,” mentioned Fairhurst. “Even if it’s a nonsense term, if they seem to know what it means, that can be a unifying force. And if somebody isn’t understanding the term, it can exclude people from that community, as well.”
6-7 has additionally survived longer than different web nonsense phrases — even that pesky “skibidi” — doubtless as a result of “grown-ups are so angry about it,” Jones mentioned.
“The fact that you can get a big reaction from somebody for something just totally meaningless — that might give it longer longevity than it might otherwise have,” Jones mentioned.
Fed-up lecturers are banning it from their school rooms or making exasperated TikToks concerning the variety of instances they’ve heard it in a single faculty day (for Dannenbring, the record is 75). Shouting “6-7!” after it’s forbidden turns into a “way to show resistance,” mentioned Fairhurst.
Teachers are now enjoying protection through the use of 6-7 themselves. A Michigan center faculty choir trainer efficiently staved away cries of “6-7” by incorporating it right into a warmup music that additionally contains “slay,” “Ohio” and “rizz.”
“Don’t scream at me … even though you get excited,” the trainer begs her class earlier than they start chanting “6-7, 6-7, 6-7, skibidi,” a refrain of little cringe cherubs.
When instructing his college students to open their textbooks to web page 67, Dannenbring will all of a sudden undertake the timbre of his enthusiastic seventh graders, who instantly protest their trainer utilizing a phrase that doesn’t belong to him. (At 27, Dannenbring is an elder member of Gen Z. But a younger trainer remains to be a trainer, and, subsequently, too previous to play.)
“If you don’t play into it, yeah, it’s super disruptive,” Dannenbring mentioned. “If you acknowledge it, then it gets over with in about 15 seconds.”
And if that doesn’t shut down the dialog, he mentioned he makes use of it incorrectly on objective: “‘That’s so 6-7 of you.’”
“The easiest way to kill it is for teachers to say that it’s cool,” Jones mentioned.
Comedian Josh Pray has began utilizing it in entrance of his kids, working it into his videos, determined to reclaim a previously innocuous quantity.
“I’m trying to take our numbers back!” he mentioned. “I’ll be 67 before they know it, and I don’t want to hear that specific tone all around me as a taunt to my age!”
Fear not, mother and father — incessantly screaming “6-7!” isn’t sufficient to show that your kids are “brainrotting.” Concerns about literacy falling and important considering abilities diminishing are official, however they’re being “projected onto normal, youthful behavior,” Jones mentioned.
“We’re rewriting our own history,” Jones mentioned. “This is not anywhere near being a new phenomenon.”
Every technology invents its personal slang, and language evolves in methods most of us won’t ever consciously understand, Jones mentioned. Kids will at all times give you cool new phrases (like “cool”!), and adults will be left scratching their heads in confusion.
Nonsense phrases like this aren’t inherently dangerous, and 6-7 definitely isn’t going to deliver concerning the finish of the English language, Fairhurst mentioned. But its reputation may be a benign symptom of our “post-truth” society, she mentioned, the place the that means and specificity of communication issues lower than folks’s interpretation of it.
“It seems like it’s sort of a relative of that kind of phenomenon, where we’re just using language to use language, and not because we see something particularly meaningful or particularly real about it,” she mentioned.
Perhaps 6-7 is already on its method out — it’s survived for almost a 12 months, primarily a century in TikTok time. Some of Dannenbring’s college students are beginning to roll their eyes once they hear their classmates yelling it. Middle faculty trainer and comic Philip Lindsay mentioned he’s already listening to potential replacements in his classroom — “41,” for one, one other equally meaningless quantity that makes kids inexplicably giggle.
“41 was started to try and dethrone 6-7,” Lindsay mentioned. “6-7 just happened. 41 was pushed.”
The method Dannenbring sees it, slang can get loads worse than 6-7. Past traits have impressed college students to stay pencils into their school-issued laptops to set them on hearth or rip sinks straight off the partitions of their faculty loos.
“We’ve had those words before, like Skibidi toilet,” he mentioned. “This one is significantly less annoying.”