“Cooked.” “Low-key.” “Sus.” What’s your favorite slang right now? Are there any words and phrases that you think are overused, and done?
How about “6-7”?
We won’t ask you to explain what it means (yet). But …
Do you laugh hysterically when your math teacher writes a problem on the board with the numbers six and seven? Do you start jumping up and down when a basketball team with 66 points has a chance to hit a free throw, like the crowd below?
Why do you think two otherwise ordinary numbers have caught on with young people, to the annoyance and confusion of the adults around them?
In “What Does ‘6-7’ Mean? Maybe Tweens Don’t Want You to Know.,” Callie Holtermann looks at the slang trend and what it says about the different generations:
If you’d like to truly mortify yourself in front of a young person, try asking the meaning of a phrase that’s being repeated in schools around the country like an incantation: “6-7.”
The conversation might go something like this. You’ll be informed that it doesn’t have a definition — it’s just funny, OK? And also, isn’t it a little bit embarrassing that you’re asking?
“There’s not really a meaning behind 6-7,” explained Ashlyn Sumpter, 10, who lives in Indiana. “I would just use it randomly,” said Carter Levy, 9, of Loganville, Ga. Dylan Goodman, 16, of Bucks County, Pa., described the phrase as an inside joke that gets funnier with each grown-up who tries and fails to understand it.
“No offense to adults, but I think they always want to know what’s going on,” she said.
They have certainly been trying. Several months after “6-7” began popping up in classrooms and online, the phrase has become the subject of perplexed social media posts by parents and dutiful explainers in national news outlets, most of which trace it to the song “Doot Doot (6 7)” by the rapper Skrilla. Last month, Dictionary.com chose the term as its word of the year, acknowledging it as “impossible to define.”
This is the oldest trick in the adolescent handbook: Say something silly, stump adults, repeat until maturity. Today, though, such terms ricochet around a network of publications and on the pages of influencers, all promising to decipher youth behavior for older audiences. “Six-seven” feels a bit like a nonsense grenade lobbed at the heart of that ecosystem. Desperate to understand us? Good luck, losers!
It is not the only way that younger generations are, consciously or not, scrambling the Very Earnest analysis of their forebears.
In the last couple of years, tweens were arbitrarily plopping “skibidi” into the middle of their sentences and using A.I. to invent absurdist characters like Ballerina Cappuccina (a coffee cup with pointe shoes) and Tralalero Tralala (a shark with human legs). In Europe, thousands of members of Gen Z have embraced a ritual called “Pudding mit Gabel”: meeting up in a park, for no discernible reason, to eat pudding with forks.
These trends can get written off as twaddle or, in modern parlance, as brain rot. But perhaps they are something else: a kind of gleeful obfuscation, an effort to be unknowable by a generation that has, virtually since birth, been relentlessly on display.
“I think they kind of know that everyone is watching them,” said Alma Fabiani, 29, the head of content at the youth-focused digital publisher Screenshot. Isn’t it more fun — and more enigmatic — to turn the joke around on the people looking?
Students, read the entire article and then tell us:
-
How much slang do you use? Do you have a favorite slang word, phrase or expression (or a favorite that at least meets our commenting standards)? What does it mean? Why do you like it?
-
How many times this week have you heard someone say “6-7”? Is it getting old or do you still crack up whenever you hear it? When do you use the popular phrase, and why?
-
Has an older sibling, parent or teacher ever asked you to explain “6-7” or why it’s so popular? If so, how did you react or reply? With embarrassment? Annoyance? Sympathy? Maybe even pride?
-
Ashlyn Sumpter, 10, says, “There’s not really a meaning behind 6-7,” and Dylan Goodman, 16, described the phrase as an inside joke that gets funnier with every grown-up who tries and fails to understand it. Do those statements ring true for you? Would you add or amend anything they said to better explain the meaning or popularity of the phrase?
-
What do you think Ms. Holtermann means when she writes that slang like “6-7,” “skibidi” and other trends are “a kind of gleeful obfuscation, an effort to be unknowable by a generation that has, virtually since birth, been relentlessly on display.” Does her observation ring true for you? What does slang like “6-7” say about Gen Z and Gen Alpha? What values or humor does it reflect?
-
The article ends by noting that with all the attention to the phrase “6-7” — in schools, online and in the media — adults are “probably already behind the ball on an even newer bit of slang.” Do you agree? What do you think will be the next “6-7”? Why do think the latest slang is so important for each new generation?
Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public and may appear in print.
Find more Student Opinion questions here. Teachers, check out this guide to learn how you can incorporate these prompts into your classroom.
Jeremy Engle is an editor of The Learning Network who worked in teaching for more than 20 years before joining The Times.
The post What Does Current Slang Reveal About Your Generation? appeared first on New York Times.
