IMO 6-7 represents what I’d call intuitive post-irony. I think “brainrot” discounts the actual nuance in a lot of zoomer speak. Much of it is caked in irony and post-irony and post-post-irony, but...
IMO 6-7 represents what I’d call intuitive post-irony. I think “brainrot” discounts the actual nuance in a lot of zoomer speak. Much of it is caked in irony and post-irony and post-post-irony, but in a way that’s mostly based on social intuition - like I doubt anyone using 6-7 can vocalize what they’re doing, but they have an intuition for what it’s mocking.
6-7 is like a ironic reaction to things like the amogus meme, leveling it up by not even having an original meaning. Amogus itself is an ironic reaction mocking people who over obsessed over among us during the pandemic. Post-post-irony.
And if you think it’s just drivel, it is in a sense mocking you specifically, the boomers who are too earnest and always one step behind the levels of irony the youth are on.
I think it's important to note that 67 came up from a group of individuals who were hyperobserved. Many of these individuals became viral in their childhoods (even if it was just local virality)...
I think it's important to note that 67 came up from a group of individuals who were hyperobserved. Many of these individuals became viral in their childhoods (even if it was just local virality) and were exposed to what it's like to be in the public eye - often extremely cruel and unforgiving. A lot of their speech, not just 67, is about obscuring meaning and avoiding surveillance - skibidi is another example of a word to signal an ingroup and meant to purposefully confuse those who are not in the group. If we think about ingroup slang as a way to connect and convey meaning amongst a minority group who is persecuted (many such examples of this such as the various gay slangs - think of words like camp, slay, dolls, diva, and so on) and that it allows folks to communicate subversively, a second order of this would be words which are explicitly meant to throw off people who are trying to "break the code" so to speak. Words which are purposefully meaningless as a means to subvert surveillance.
Of course, all of this gets amplified and modified by the existing environment which is not just surveillance heavy but dripping in misinformation and post-capitalistic propaganda and brainrot. As you've mentioned this has given rise to irony (post^n-irony as well of course) and notably also absurdism as a whole amongst that generation. Given the relatively bleak outlook of someone entering their adulthood around now with society as fucked up as it currently is, it makes a lot of sense that their speech would be means to both subvert and point out all the issues we see in a hyper-capitalistic ad and algorithm driven world.
I kind of understand and can follow along what you are saying, except: What do you mean by this? Are we not living in actual capitalistic systems anymore? I'm likely just not understanding the...
I kind of understand and can follow along what you are saying, except:
post-capitalistic propaganda
What do you mean by this? Are we not living in actual capitalistic systems anymore?
A better set of words to use there might have been "late-stage capitalistic propaganda." The general statement there was that something like an oligopoly is not capitalism because capitalism is...
A better set of words to use there might have been "late-stage capitalistic propaganda." The general statement there was that something like an oligopoly is not capitalism because capitalism is supposed to be an economic system (and the concepts of capitalism such as competition cannot happen when power is consolidated in this fashion), not a governmental system, but I'm not particularly interested in going down the rabbit hole of discussing things like laissez-faire vs. welfare capitalism and more modern attempts to classify capitalism outside of just the economy.
Well I mean we are arguably in the beginning stages of fascism here (and arguably coming from an oligopoly) and there's a lot of economic favoritism happening to Trump's business partners and...
Well I mean we are arguably in the beginning stages of fascism here (and arguably coming from an oligopoly) and there's a lot of economic favoritism happening to Trump's business partners and buddies. At what point does it lose the label of capitalism? In this country in particular I think it's useful to label it something besides capitalism because we have this unhealthy fascination with the idea of capitalism (free market, invisible hand) that either never reflected the realities of capitalism or cause people to view things with rose-tinted glasses. It might do many people good to reject the label of capitalism and to use terms like oligopoly and fascism to paint to the current landscape anyhow.
As an aside please mark this as noise since we're a bit off-topic now. And thank you for the trust! It's nice to hear my thoughts and opinions are found valuable by members of this community 💜
Yeahhhh but the incessant 6 7 spam on platforms like Twitch is also just brain rot. Like, I get it, and you're not wrong for the most part, but let's not assign too much meaning to something...
Yeahhhh but the incessant 6 7 spam on platforms like Twitch is also just brain rot.
Like, I get it, and you're not wrong for the most part, but let's not assign too much meaning to something everyone says at any chance they get just to say it like everyone else.
It's not novel at all though. It seems pretty obvious to anyone who is paying attention, it's just a way to signal in group membership by being intentionally nonsensical. It's literally the exact...
It's not novel at all though. It seems pretty obvious to anyone who is paying attention, it's just a way to signal in group membership by being intentionally nonsensical.
It's literally the exact same meme as "E", which was a decade ago.
As a parent only in his second year of having school aged kids it’s been interesting seeing memes from the other side. At first some of them irritated me because I wrongly assumed they were crass...
As a parent only in his second year of having school aged kids it’s been interesting seeing memes from the other side. At first some of them irritated me because I wrongly assumed they were crass or offensive stuff. So I asked my kids to tone it down a bit at home. They didn’t listen, but I also figured I’d just let them be kids! If I can enjoy “my anus is bleeding!” as a teen, they can surely enjoy screaming “John Cena” (a person they couldn’t identify if their lives depended on it)
Then 6-7 happened and I was already aware of it and knew it basically meant nothing. So I didn’t stop the kids from saying it at home and actually kind of get a kick out of saying it to them because they’ll say it in unison back. There’s a very brief window of time where they don’t yet realize I’m not the coolest person ever so I’m gonna enjoy that a bit :)
But yeah I think a lot of strong negative reactions to memes from kids are because the parents or whoever don’t understand and either can’t or won’t try to.
That is the way. Teachers are (justifiably) over it, but as a parent, why not join in on the nonsense to bond with your kids. Enjoy something being wholly unimportant.
That is the way. Teachers are (justifiably) over it, but as a parent, why not join in on the nonsense to bond with your kids. Enjoy something being wholly unimportant.
This is maybe the most honest "the way." If you want the youth to stop doing something, genuinely engage with it and join in, it immediately becomes the most lame thing in the world. (While, I've...
This is maybe the most honest "the way." If you want the youth to stop doing something, genuinely engage with it and join in, it immediately becomes the most lame thing in the world. (While, I've found, also getting you some small amount of credit with the youths for at least genuinely approaching their culture without overtly belittling it.)
My youngest kids (15/12) both think 6-7 is stupid and grossly over-hyped at this point. They get annoyed at all the kids that still use it and if they use the hand motions it's infinitely worse to...
My youngest kids (15/12) both think 6-7 is stupid and grossly over-hyped at this point. They get annoyed at all the kids that still use it and if they use the hand motions it's infinitely worse to them.
I'm very out of the loop so I had to look it up first to find out what "6-7" is. I got a kick out of this juxtaposition in the Wikipedia entry on it:
I'm very out of the loop so I had to look it up first to find out what "6-7" is. I got a kick out of this juxtaposition in the Wikipedia entry on it:
In October 2025, Dictionary.com named "6-7" as its 2025 Word of the Year, describing it as "a burst of energy that spreads and connects people long before anyone agrees on what it actually means". Merriam-Webster described "6-7" as “a nonsensical expression used especially by teens and tweens”.
"And these children that you spit on, as they try to change their worlds, are immune to your consultations." (I love that Merriam-Webster would likely have approved of the linguistic style that...
Merriam-Webster described "6-7" as “a nonsensical expression used especially by teens and tweens”.
"And these children that you spit on, as they try to change their worlds, are immune to your consultations."
(I love that Merriam-Webster would likely have approved of the linguistic style that Bowie used to smite them, and the likes of them, and how relevant this message still feels after so many years.)
I remember All Your Base Are Belong To Us. You can trace it back to a bad video game translation, but it didn't get popular because it made some universally resonant statement about badly...
I remember All Your Base Are Belong To Us. You can trace it back to a bad video game translation, but it didn't get popular because it made some universally resonant statement about badly internationalized games, it was fun to say and confused people who weren't in the know.
My oldest child (8) learned this at school like last week from a bunch of middle schoolers that were there to help out. Whenever they say it to me, I just say, "ok" and move on with my life....
My oldest child (8) learned this at school like last week from a bunch of middle schoolers that were there to help out.
Whenever they say it to me, I just say, "ok" and move on with my life.
Watched this video yesterday and it was interesting though.
My 8 year-old also learned it recently. It sounds like it's constant at his school and my wife's school (she teaches at the middle school). This is one meme that I sort of enjoy, though; it seems...
My 8 year-old also learned it recently. It sounds like it's constant at his school and my wife's school (she teaches at the middle school). This is one meme that I sort of enjoy, though; it seems generally meaningless and totally harmless. My response is usually "8-9." And I figure my enjoyment of it will actually probably make it go away faster (also, on Halloween I saw one adult walking around with a 6 and 7 balloon).
I, at age 40, was "6 7" for Halloween, and I was a smash hit with the 6-20 demographic. Then again, I was also "Da Biggest Bird" two years ago. I do these things to delight and half-embarrass my...
I, at age 40, was "6 7" for Halloween, and I was a smash hit with the 6-20 demographic.
I do these things to delight and half-embarrass my now 10- and 14- year old. When parents asked what 6 7 meant I shrugged and said, "Nothing probably, but I'm just out here corrupting the youth" and wobbled my hands at them as I backed away.
I got frustrated by my young kids doing it, so I embraced it for about 15-30 minutes. My son ran off to hide in his bedroom in frustration and I haven't heard 6-7 out of him since. Nothing is more...
And I figure my enjoyment of it will actually probably make it go away faster
I got frustrated by my young kids doing it, so I embraced it for about 15-30 minutes. My son ran off to hide in his bedroom in frustration and I haven't heard 6-7 out of him since. Nothing is more uncool than parents doing the cool thing.
My buddy, whose has two kids the same age as my youngest kids, stayed with us for two days recently. Listening to his kids groan when he and his wife constantly found ways to interject 6-7 into...
My buddy, whose has two kids the same age as my youngest kids, stayed with us for two days recently. Listening to his kids groan when he and his wife constantly found ways to interject 6-7 into everything was hilarious. It seems like an almost 50yo parent using your phrase is enough to make it uncool.
I actually said it back to them this evening and it was pretty fun to goof off with. Between the oldest, myself and my youngest, we just started saying random numbers at dinner and had a good time...
I actually said it back to them this evening and it was pretty fun to goof off with. Between the oldest, myself and my youngest, we just started saying random numbers at dinner and had a good time of it.
I think we're all wringing our hands over nothing. The comparison I actually came up with is "23 skiddoo," which dates back to the 20s. If you squint, you can see "67 skibidi" hidden in there. I...
I think we're all wringing our hands over nothing. The comparison I actually came up with is "23 skiddoo," which dates back to the 20s. If you squint, you can see "67 skibidi" hidden in there.
I suspect the "post-(post...)-post irony" discussion is the best one on this post, because it fits with the evolution my generation (millennials) saw. Of course generations take it beyond its genesis, there is more irony in life today as the contradictions of our world becomes more transparent.
Our response as a society to 9/11 now feels to me like the death of sincerity and the rise of self-aware irony in the anglosphere. The 2003-2007 "good times" (America flexing muscles again as democracy police, wealth growing, home ownership burgeoning) that felt like they would never end were an ironic contrast against the realities behind it (cruelties exacted abroad for economic power, debt exploding, sub-prime mortgages turning into a bomb). 2008 was the death of many illusions for then-under-30s about prosperity being shared, yet we still all parroted. Of course in 2009, we had HOPE, and it turned out the policies were gradualist in a time when the appetite was different. The continued recession-like malaise into 2015, the lack of economic progress, the disconnect between Wall Street numbers pumping the economy up and underemployment...no wonder 2016 folks elected a jackass who insisted he'd bring radical change, "because it's someone else's fault." The shattering of political norms as we still pledge allegiance to a flag whose ideals were long behind us is irony manifest. The pandemic resembled nationwide schizophrenia, with two radically different beliefs about the origin and how we respond, so who can trust anything? Ironies abound under what some other commenters here called "late-stage capitalism." Those who are children now are no less acute observers than we were.
Of course, that post ironic memory also arose during the twenties, embracing The roaring times after horrible war and guilted celebrations, but with an awareness that it could not last forever. Even if only subliminal, it may have been there. So I guess the 2020s are the 1920s again.
noise: I put 2 seconds of thought into this 6-7 embodies the precession of simulacra as the reality of language becomes hyperreal under late stage capitalism. There is only sign value, as any...
noise: I put 2 seconds of thought into this
6-7 embodies the precession of simulacra as the reality of language becomes hyperreal under late stage capitalism. There is only sign value, as any meaning assigned to its use is lost as it enters the cultural zeitgeist.
I am thoroughly unconvinced that this is a new phenomenon. At worst I suspect it is sped up or compounded by the internet. Linguistic or symbolic crazes are a dime a dozen as far back as we have...
I am thoroughly unconvinced that this is a new phenomenon. At worst I suspect it is sped up or compounded by the internet. Linguistic or symbolic crazes are a dime a dozen as far back as we have writing, and I can think of other examples that were meaningless to begin with, or were divorced from their meaning early. I drew the "cool S" on my notebook/desk all the time and me and my friends said "Wazzzzap" until my parents wanted to murder us, my parents drew "Kilroy" on things all the time, and I'm certain if I took more than a minute I could think up more examples of essentially meaningless cultural symbols like this.
I've also seen "the game" as an example of the thing that kids did but parents/adults didn't understand or participate in and was both nonsense and meant something at the same time.
I've also seen "the game" as an example of the thing that kids did but parents/adults didn't understand or participate in and was both nonsense and meant something at the same time.
Yeah, I do think there's a distinction in that The Game has a meaning even if it's a little abstract or meta, where for most of the kids involved "6 7" is just a trendy thing to say and show that...
Yeah, I do think there's a distinction in that The Game has a meaning even if it's a little abstract or meta, where for most of the kids involved "6 7" is just a trendy thing to say and show that you're "in" (although OPs video does make the point that "6 7" almost certainly wasn't meaningless in its original context). I don't think that's really a new thing, though, it's just that we're aware of these things more because of how connected we are (imo).
As an aside, my kids' friends are all "playing" "The Game", probably because they heard about it from their Millennial parents. It mostly consists of them running up to each other (or their parents or friends' parents), shouting "the game" and running away laughing.
I'm glad to hear it lives on, I meant more that when millennials were kids it fell into that specific category of things kids say that make no sense to adults. Wazzzzzzzup came from an ad so it...
I'm glad to hear it lives on, I meant more that when millennials were kids it fell into that specific category of things kids say that make no sense to adults.
Wazzzzzzzup came from an ad so it was a bit different than 6-7 too but I thought it comparable.
Speaking of which, LEMMiNO actually did a cool mini-documentary on the Universal/Cool S: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQdxHi4_Pvc cc: @TheRtRevKaiser
It's the exact same style of humor as one of the more memorable jokes from Spongebob Squarepants, in the episode where Patrick attends Spongebob's driving school and they're losing their minds...
It's the exact same style of humor as one of the more memorable jokes from Spongebob Squarepants, in the episode where Patrick attends Spongebob's driving school and they're losing their minds over the numbers 24 and 25.
...I have been full on grumpy old man embracing how much the nonsense of 6-7 pisses me off, but this legitimately changed my mind lol. Reminded me how much I love the stupid ass 27 joke from the...
...I have been full on grumpy old man embracing how much the nonsense of 6-7 pisses me off, but this legitimately changed my mind lol.
Reminded me how much I love the stupid ass 27 joke from the Simpsons.
Well done! Guess I gotta ease up on my lawn signs.
I don't have kids of my own nor am I around them often so I just learned about this phenomenon from South Park and I still don't get it but it was a great episode.
I don't have kids of my own nor am I around them often so I just learned about this phenomenon from South Park and I still don't get it but it was a great episode.
I learned about this meme from The Guardian, which makes me feel really old. I guess it’s 4/5 years since I’ve actually known what’s going on in meme culture. I won’t comment on 6-7 itself because...
I learned about this meme from The Guardian, which makes me feel really old. I guess it’s 4/5 years since I’ve actually known what’s going on in meme culture.
I won’t comment on 6-7 itself because it’s really hard to assess these things from the outside. @papasquat compared it to “E” which seems apt.
What is interesting to me is that 6-7 seems to be part of a wider trend of cultural homogenisation. Every English speaking country, even English speaking international schools around the world, seems to be witnessing this meme. If the internet and online culture really are resulting in a convergence of speech, thought and opinions across the world, this could be a problem. It seems like now more than ever what we need is a true diversity of thought in order to solve the difficult problems facing the world.
On the other hand, if such a homogenisation really is happening, it may be a good thing for increasing fellowship and solidarity across the world. Cosmopolitanism is a good thing.
Rant: when I was at school (not so long ago), we had our own homegrown jokes and memes, our own way of seeing and interacting with the world. It seems like different people and groups had their own slice of the world and culture that they came into contact with and took into their own lives. You can think of it like a Venn diagram.
I’m not suggesting that now kids all have the exact same experiences, but if the Venn diagrams are overlapping more (as some trends like 6-7 seem to suggest), then it’s a double edged sword. On the one hand they have more in common, and this is generally a good thing. But then there are more experiences being missed out on, or perhaps to put it another way, they may be missing experiences which would inform their own unique worldview. And that would be a pity - but I’m jumping to conclusions, since there is no serious evidence that that is the case. /rant
I'm not sure if culture in general is becoming homogenized, or if it's just regional culture. In some cases, culture is actually going the opposite way. 15 years ago, you could talk to anyone...
I'm not sure if culture in general is becoming homogenized, or if it's just regional culture. In some cases, culture is actually going the opposite way.
15 years ago, you could talk to anyone about The Office. Even if they didn't watch every episode, basically everyone in the US had seen an episode, and failing that, they were at least familiar with it. 30 years ago it was Seinfeld. 50 years ago it was Cheers, and so on.
Now? I don't know a single person who watches For all Mankind, despite it being a great show. I have a single other friend in real life who watches The Chair Company.
There are plenty of people online who watch those shows and sometimes I look at subreddits for them, but we no longer have huge shared cultural artifacts like the office. Same goes for games, hobbies, music, and so on. The references that I make to these things are only understood by other people online who are familiar with them, not to my real life friends or family.
So yeah, in some aspects there is a huge big monoculture, but in others, there are tiny little microcultures everywhere, completely divorced from geography.
I watched For All Mankind and agree it’s a good show even if I think the fourth season was rough at the start. His old man beard and make up was too much for me. Not sure if that counts as...
I watched For All Mankind and agree it’s a good show even if I think the fourth season was rough at the start. His old man beard and make up was too much for me.
Not sure if that counts as “knowing” someone for you but thought I’d throw it out there on the off chance it does.
...cosmopolitanism is certainly a thing but i think assigning a moral value to it, good or bad, is overreach in the same manner one might characterise parochialism as provincial diversity...
...cosmopolitanism is certainly a thing but i think assigning a moral value to it, good or bad, is overreach in the same manner one might characterise parochialism as provincial diversity...
That’s fair, I think there are good aspects to it. Really what I was trying to say is that increased communication across cultural, political and geographical boundaries has many benefits, but...
That’s fair, I think there are good aspects to it. Really what I was trying to say is that increased communication across cultural, political and geographical boundaries has many benefits, but it’s not good if it results in homogenisation.
IMO 6-7 represents what I’d call intuitive post-irony. I think “brainrot” discounts the actual nuance in a lot of zoomer speak. Much of it is caked in irony and post-irony and post-post-irony, but in a way that’s mostly based on social intuition - like I doubt anyone using 6-7 can vocalize what they’re doing, but they have an intuition for what it’s mocking.
6-7 is like a ironic reaction to things like the amogus meme, leveling it up by not even having an original meaning. Amogus itself is an ironic reaction mocking people who over obsessed over among us during the pandemic. Post-post-irony.
And if you think it’s just drivel, it is in a sense mocking you specifically, the boomers who are too earnest and always one step behind the levels of irony the youth are on.
I think it's important to note that 67 came up from a group of individuals who were hyperobserved. Many of these individuals became viral in their childhoods (even if it was just local virality) and were exposed to what it's like to be in the public eye - often extremely cruel and unforgiving. A lot of their speech, not just 67, is about obscuring meaning and avoiding surveillance - skibidi is another example of a word to signal an ingroup and meant to purposefully confuse those who are not in the group. If we think about ingroup slang as a way to connect and convey meaning amongst a minority group who is persecuted (many such examples of this such as the various gay slangs - think of words like camp, slay, dolls, diva, and so on) and that it allows folks to communicate subversively, a second order of this would be words which are explicitly meant to throw off people who are trying to "break the code" so to speak. Words which are purposefully meaningless as a means to subvert surveillance.
Of course, all of this gets amplified and modified by the existing environment which is not just surveillance heavy but dripping in misinformation and post-capitalistic propaganda and brainrot. As you've mentioned this has given rise to irony (post^n-irony as well of course) and notably also absurdism as a whole amongst that generation. Given the relatively bleak outlook of someone entering their adulthood around now with society as fucked up as it currently is, it makes a lot of sense that their speech would be means to both subvert and point out all the issues we see in a hyper-capitalistic ad and algorithm driven world.
I kind of understand and can follow along what you are saying, except:
What do you mean by this? Are we not living in actual capitalistic systems anymore?
I'm likely just not understanding the context.
A better set of words to use there might have been "late-stage capitalistic propaganda." The general statement there was that something like an oligopoly is not capitalism because capitalism is supposed to be an economic system (and the concepts of capitalism such as competition cannot happen when power is consolidated in this fashion), not a governmental system, but I'm not particularly interested in going down the rabbit hole of discussing things like laissez-faire vs. welfare capitalism and more modern attempts to classify capitalism outside of just the economy.
Thanks, makes sense, just got a little worried someone I tend to trust and listen closely too thought we where out of capitalism.
Well I mean we are arguably in the beginning stages of fascism here (and arguably coming from an oligopoly) and there's a lot of economic favoritism happening to Trump's business partners and buddies. At what point does it lose the label of capitalism? In this country in particular I think it's useful to label it something besides capitalism because we have this unhealthy fascination with the idea of capitalism (free market, invisible hand) that either never reflected the realities of capitalism or cause people to view things with rose-tinted glasses. It might do many people good to reject the label of capitalism and to use terms like oligopoly and fascism to paint to the current landscape anyhow.
As an aside please mark this as noise since we're a bit off-topic now. And thank you for the trust! It's nice to hear my thoughts and opinions are found valuable by members of this community 💜
Yeahhhh but the incessant 6 7 spam on platforms like Twitch is also just brain rot.
Like, I get it, and you're not wrong for the most part, but let's not assign too much meaning to something everyone says at any chance they get just to say it like everyone else.
It's not novel at all though. It seems pretty obvious to anyone who is paying attention, it's just a way to signal in group membership by being intentionally nonsensical.
It's literally the exact same meme as "E", which was a decade ago.
The ‘E’ meme shows just how weird memes can get
To be fair, E is from 2018 so maybe you missed it or forgot
As a parent only in his second year of having school aged kids it’s been interesting seeing memes from the other side. At first some of them irritated me because I wrongly assumed they were crass or offensive stuff. So I asked my kids to tone it down a bit at home. They didn’t listen, but I also figured I’d just let them be kids! If I can enjoy “my anus is bleeding!” as a teen, they can surely enjoy screaming “John Cena” (a person they couldn’t identify if their lives depended on it)
Then 6-7 happened and I was already aware of it and knew it basically meant nothing. So I didn’t stop the kids from saying it at home and actually kind of get a kick out of saying it to them because they’ll say it in unison back. There’s a very brief window of time where they don’t yet realize I’m not the coolest person ever so I’m gonna enjoy that a bit :)
But yeah I think a lot of strong negative reactions to memes from kids are because the parents or whoever don’t understand and either can’t or won’t try to.
That is the way. Teachers are (justifiably) over it, but as a parent, why not join in on the nonsense to bond with your kids. Enjoy something being wholly unimportant.
As a teacher, I started doing it more than the kids... They asked ME to stop!
This is maybe the most honest "the way." If you want the youth to stop doing something, genuinely engage with it and join in, it immediately becomes the most lame thing in the world. (While, I've found, also getting you some small amount of credit with the youths for at least genuinely approaching their culture without overtly belittling it.)
I'm a firm believer in that if you take advantage of this now the same window will reopen later if it closes at all!
My youngest kids (15/12) both think 6-7 is stupid and grossly over-hyped at this point. They get annoyed at all the kids that still use it and if they use the hand motions it's infinitely worse to them.
I'm very out of the loop so I had to look it up first to find out what "6-7" is. I got a kick out of this juxtaposition in the Wikipedia entry on it:
"And these children that you spit on, as they try to change their worlds, are immune to your consultations."
(I love that Merriam-Webster would likely have approved of the linguistic style that Bowie used to smite them, and the likes of them, and how relevant this message still feels after so many years.)
Did I miss something in this conversation? That seems unnecessarily aggressive for the post it's replying to.
It is actually a lyric from the David Bowie song "Changes", which was also featured in the beginning of the film "The Breakfast Club".
Thanks for pointing out I was being too vague. Added quotation marks.
I remember All Your Base Are Belong To Us. You can trace it back to a bad video game translation, but it didn't get popular because it made some universally resonant statement about badly internationalized games, it was fun to say and confused people who weren't in the know.
Being at 6s and 7s is to be discombobulated or unwell in my lexicon.
Source: am old.
I also know this meaning from Evita. Maybe this meme could be Gen Alpha's gateway drug to musical theatre!!
My oldest child (8) learned this at school like last week from a bunch of middle schoolers that were there to help out.
Whenever they say it to me, I just say, "ok" and move on with my life.
Watched this video yesterday and it was interesting though.
My 8 year-old also learned it recently. It sounds like it's constant at his school and my wife's school (she teaches at the middle school). This is one meme that I sort of enjoy, though; it seems generally meaningless and totally harmless. My response is usually "8-9." And I figure my enjoyment of it will actually probably make it go away faster (also, on Halloween I saw one adult walking around with a 6 and 7 balloon).
I, at age 40, was "6 7" for Halloween, and I was a smash hit with the 6-20 demographic.
Then again, I was also "Da Biggest Bird" two years ago.
I do these things to delight and half-embarrass my now 10- and 14- year old. When parents asked what 6 7 meant I shrugged and said, "Nothing probably, but I'm just out here corrupting the youth" and wobbled my hands at them as I backed away.
I got frustrated by my young kids doing it, so I embraced it for about 15-30 minutes. My son ran off to hide in his bedroom in frustration and I haven't heard 6-7 out of him since. Nothing is more uncool than parents doing the cool thing.
My buddy, whose has two kids the same age as my youngest kids, stayed with us for two days recently. Listening to his kids groan when he and his wife constantly found ways to interject 6-7 into everything was hilarious. It seems like an almost 50yo parent using your phrase is enough to make it uncool.
It's one of the great joys of parenting, making your kids slang into the least cool thing possible 😅
I actually said it back to them this evening and it was pretty fun to goof off with. Between the oldest, myself and my youngest, we just started saying random numbers at dinner and had a good time of it.
I think we're all wringing our hands over nothing. The comparison I actually came up with is "23 skiddoo," which dates back to the 20s. If you squint, you can see "67 skibidi" hidden in there.
I suspect the "post-(post...)-post irony" discussion is the best one on this post, because it fits with the evolution my generation (millennials) saw. Of course generations take it beyond its genesis, there is more irony in life today as the contradictions of our world becomes more transparent.
Our response as a society to 9/11 now feels to me like the death of sincerity and the rise of self-aware irony in the anglosphere. The 2003-2007 "good times" (America flexing muscles again as democracy police, wealth growing, home ownership burgeoning) that felt like they would never end were an ironic contrast against the realities behind it (cruelties exacted abroad for economic power, debt exploding, sub-prime mortgages turning into a bomb). 2008 was the death of many illusions for then-under-30s about prosperity being shared, yet we still all parroted. Of course in 2009, we had HOPE, and it turned out the policies were gradualist in a time when the appetite was different. The continued recession-like malaise into 2015, the lack of economic progress, the disconnect between Wall Street numbers pumping the economy up and underemployment...no wonder 2016 folks elected a jackass who insisted he'd bring radical change, "because it's someone else's fault." The shattering of political norms as we still pledge allegiance to a flag whose ideals were long behind us is irony manifest. The pandemic resembled nationwide schizophrenia, with two radically different beliefs about the origin and how we respond, so who can trust anything? Ironies abound under what some other commenters here called "late-stage capitalism." Those who are children now are no less acute observers than we were.
Of course, that post ironic memory also arose during the twenties, embracing The roaring times after horrible war and guilted celebrations, but with an awareness that it could not last forever. Even if only subliminal, it may have been there. So I guess the 2020s are the 1920s again.
A neat video from a linguistics prof on what "6-7" is all about, where it came from and how it functions in a social context.
noise: I put 2 seconds of thought into this
6-7 embodies the precession of simulacra as the reality of language becomes hyperreal under late stage capitalism. There is only sign value, as any meaning assigned to its use is lost as it enters the cultural zeitgeist.
I am thoroughly unconvinced that this is a new phenomenon. At worst I suspect it is sped up or compounded by the internet. Linguistic or symbolic crazes are a dime a dozen as far back as we have writing, and I can think of other examples that were meaningless to begin with, or were divorced from their meaning early. I drew the "cool S" on my notebook/desk all the time and me and my friends said "Wazzzzap" until my parents wanted to murder us, my parents drew "Kilroy" on things all the time, and I'm certain if I took more than a minute I could think up more examples of essentially meaningless cultural symbols like this.
That's so totally fetch.
I've also seen "the game" as an example of the thing that kids did but parents/adults didn't understand or participate in and was both nonsense and meant something at the same time.
Yeah, I do think there's a distinction in that The Game has a meaning even if it's a little abstract or meta, where for most of the kids involved "6 7" is just a trendy thing to say and show that you're "in" (although OPs video does make the point that "6 7" almost certainly wasn't meaningless in its original context). I don't think that's really a new thing, though, it's just that we're aware of these things more because of how connected we are (imo).
As an aside, my kids' friends are all "playing" "The Game", probably because they heard about it from their Millennial parents. It mostly consists of them running up to each other (or their parents or friends' parents), shouting "the game" and running away laughing.
I prefer the version that has a bit more... existential weight, so I run up and yell "Roko's Basilisk!!"
I'm glad to hear it lives on, I meant more that when millennials were kids it fell into that specific category of things kids say that make no sense to adults.
Wazzzzzzzup came from an ad so it was a bit different than 6-7 too but I thought it comparable.
Cool S is back, baybeeee. My 10yo told me yesterday that he might get a tattoo when he's grown up, and it will probably be a Cool S. Ha!
Speaking of which, LEMMiNO actually did a cool mini-documentary on the Universal/Cool S:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQdxHi4_Pvc
cc: @TheRtRevKaiser
Hey thanks! The minidoc was illuminating. I always just bought the Stüssy explanation.
YVW, and yeah I remember it getting called the "Stussy S" when I was in school too. :P
It's the exact same style of humor as one of the more memorable jokes from Spongebob Squarepants, in the episode where Patrick attends Spongebob's driving school and they're losing their minds over the numbers 24 and 25.
...I have been full on grumpy old man embracing how much the nonsense of 6-7 pisses me off, but this legitimately changed my mind lol.
Reminded me how much I love the stupid ass 27 joke from the Simpsons.
Well done! Guess I gotta ease up on my lawn signs.
I don't have kids of my own nor am I around them often so I just learned about this phenomenon from South Park and I still don't get it but it was a great episode.
I learned about this meme from The Guardian, which makes me feel really old. I guess it’s 4/5 years since I’ve actually known what’s going on in meme culture.
I won’t comment on 6-7 itself because it’s really hard to assess these things from the outside. @papasquat compared it to “E” which seems apt.
What is interesting to me is that 6-7 seems to be part of a wider trend of cultural homogenisation. Every English speaking country, even English speaking international schools around the world, seems to be witnessing this meme. If the internet and online culture really are resulting in a convergence of speech, thought and opinions across the world, this could be a problem. It seems like now more than ever what we need is a true diversity of thought in order to solve the difficult problems facing the world.
On the other hand, if such a homogenisation really is happening, it may be a good thing for increasing fellowship and solidarity across the world. Cosmopolitanism is a good thing.
Rant: when I was at school (not so long ago), we had our own homegrown jokes and memes, our own way of seeing and interacting with the world. It seems like different people and groups had their own slice of the world and culture that they came into contact with and took into their own lives. You can think of it like a Venn diagram.
I’m not suggesting that now kids all have the exact same experiences, but if the Venn diagrams are overlapping more (as some trends like 6-7 seem to suggest), then it’s a double edged sword. On the one hand they have more in common, and this is generally a good thing. But then there are more experiences being missed out on, or perhaps to put it another way, they may be missing experiences which would inform their own unique worldview. And that would be a pity - but I’m jumping to conclusions, since there is no serious evidence that that is the case. /rant
I'm not sure if culture in general is becoming homogenized, or if it's just regional culture. In some cases, culture is actually going the opposite way.
15 years ago, you could talk to anyone about The Office. Even if they didn't watch every episode, basically everyone in the US had seen an episode, and failing that, they were at least familiar with it. 30 years ago it was Seinfeld. 50 years ago it was Cheers, and so on.
Now? I don't know a single person who watches For all Mankind, despite it being a great show. I have a single other friend in real life who watches The Chair Company.
There are plenty of people online who watch those shows and sometimes I look at subreddits for them, but we no longer have huge shared cultural artifacts like the office. Same goes for games, hobbies, music, and so on. The references that I make to these things are only understood by other people online who are familiar with them, not to my real life friends or family.
So yeah, in some aspects there is a huge big monoculture, but in others, there are tiny little microcultures everywhere, completely divorced from geography.
I watched For All Mankind and agree it’s a good show even if I think the fourth season was rough at the start. His old man beard and make up was too much for me.
Not sure if that counts as “knowing” someone for you but thought I’d throw it out there on the off chance it does.
...cosmopolitanism is certainly a thing but i think assigning a moral value to it, good or bad, is overreach in the same manner one might characterise parochialism as provincial diversity...
That’s fair, I think there are good aspects to it. Really what I was trying to say is that increased communication across cultural, political and geographical boundaries has many benefits, but it’s not good if it results in homogenisation.