What started as a nonsensical lyric in a rap song has become one of the strangest linguistic trends.
It’s been a minute, but the 67 meme is just not going away. In fact, Dictionary.com last week announced that it’s the site’s Word of the Year. It means nothing, but it means a lot at the same time. And it’s a sign that internet slang has filtered into the mainstream.
Reports abound of kids in classrooms confusing teachers, as teens and tweens greet one another with the meme and just simply yell it out for no reason whatsoever. Six seven, never sixty seven. It’s a Generation Alpha term that’s leaked into Gen Z a bit, and intended to confuse and laager out the not-knowers with a generational inside joke that’s, well, also a nothingness at the same time.
What started as a nonsensical lyric in a rap song has become one of the strangest linguistic trends. It’s part meme, part code and has sown confusion all over the place.
It means nothing and everything
Dictionary.com said that perhaps the most defining feature of 67 is that it cannot be defined.
“It’s meaningless, ubiquitous, and nonsensical. In other words, it has all the hallmarks of brain rot,” reads the site.
It further indicated that “it’s the logical endpoint of being perpetually online, scrolling endlessly and consuming content fed to users by algorithms trained by other algorithms.”
And while it is meaningless, it creates a connection between people for the same reason. It also shows how quickly an idea can spread across the internet and then enter global chinwags.
Rap, TikTok, Global Recognition
The chaos began with Doot Doot 6 7, a track by a rap singer called Skrilla released late last year. Pair that with NBA basketball star LaMelo Ball, who happens to stand 6 feet 7 inches tall in imperial measurement. Within weeks of the track’s release, content creators used clips of Ball and the song, fuelling the meme that’s had everyone 67-ing.
Classroom inside jokes
Teachers in classrooms around the world have greyed overnight as the meme quickly became the bane of their day. Say the number six or seven in class as a normal outcome of a math problem or just a page number in a reader, for example, everyone repeats and yells it out in response.
Reports in the media recently have said that some schools in the United States and England have even banned the use of the number. And that’s fuel for the inside joke because it made the whole thing funnier. Eye rolls from generations prior just make the meme spread faster and stick more.
67 is the Salvador Dali of Lingo
Just as many of twentieth-century artist Salvador Dalí’s paintings are somewhat incomprehensible at first sight, so too is the absurdity of language today. It’s playful nonsense and part of a larger meme, so to speak, of meaningless and arbitrary terms that are going viral. It’s about more than a feeling, a vibe or a meaning. And it’s there, because it can be, and used, because they can. The less it makes sense, the better.
From slang to ‘what the hell does it mean’
Linguists might call six seven an interjection without content. In plain English, it is a sound that shows belonging, but ascribing a real meaning to it is challenging. According to Dictionary.com, some people say “that it means ‘so-so,’ or ‘maybe this, maybe that,’ especially when paired with its signature hand gesture where both palms face up and move alternately up and down.”
As already demonstrated in classroom antics, some youngsters, said the site, “sensing an opportunity to reliably frustrate their elders, will use it to stand in for a reply to just about any question.” It cites an example as well: “Hello, darling child, how was school today?” “67!”
Other researchers have suggested that 67 is akin to terms like ‘bro’, ‘dude’ and ‘rizz’, for example. It’s social shorthand for being in the know.
There are spinoffs, already
Language is an incredible machine that never stops breathing or evolving. There are already spinoff terms like six-sendy and 41.
Again, the next number set is thought to have originated from a song by Blizzi Boy called 41 Song. Instead of hands up and palms open, the motion for this track is palms down, moving them back and forth over your chest. It’s another meaningless term that’s on the up, meming its way across global wiring. It’s still niche, but 41 has been called the new 67.
Redefining meaning with a helping of annoyance
Every generation has its word that defines it. Gen X had ‘rad’, ‘yo’ and so on. Millennials had the slightly less sticky ‘lit’, and before that, Boomers invented ‘bogus’ and ‘groovy’. 67 is the Generation Alpha word, adopted by Gen Z. And while older generations see it as brain rot, well, so did the elders consider ‘groovy’ and ‘rad’ and ‘lit’ in their time. It’s linguistic creativity and above all else, a sign that English is alive, kicking and evolving.
Yet the primary difference between generations prior slang and brain rot is the body motions that now form part of the meme. It’s as if talking is becoming performance art, too.
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Rinsed, repeated to death and changed up
Beware when grown-ups start using 67, because that will be the beginning of the end. Just like when middle-aged men thought cool of adding lit to their vocabularies, 67 may die a sudden death if parents and teachers start 67-ing it daily.
Chances are, too, that 67 may just fade or turn into a TikTok dance move, which again guarantees a painful death. But, it’s a testament to how quickly ideas and notions, memes, can spread across the net, and that meaning is not always the foundation of anything new.
It’s also a sure sign that feeling, fun and joyful meaningless noise may be heading back to everyone. A nice change from the Gen Z grey of generational over-contemplation.
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