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.
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”.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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 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.
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.
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!!
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.
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!
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.