Another day, another slang word that makes absolutely zero sense. The latest culprit is “6 7,” a phrase that’s being thrown around in classrooms in Australia and beyond, courtesy of TikTok, Instagram, and the never-ending churn of internet in-jokes.
It comes from a track called Doot Doot (6 7) by rapper Skrilla, where the lyric “six-seven” repeats over and over. Somewhere along the way, kids clipped the sound, looped it on social media, and decided the numbers were funny enough to live a life of their own.
The fact that NBA star LaMelo Ball stands 6 feet 7 inches tall only fueled the meme’s adoption.
So what does it actually mean? Nothing, which is part of the point. Depending on who you ask, it can describe something that’s “mid,” make a half-hearted nod to height, or drop into conversation as filler. It’s the kind of brain-rot slang that resists definition because definition would ruin the joke.
Gen Alpha Won’t Stop Saying ‘6 7’—Here’s the Meaning Behind It
Parents may find it baffling, but teachers are the ones living in the trenches of the six-seven craze. Some have even banned it altogether. They’re sick of hearing the same numbers yelled over their lessons.
Others have surrendered, getting smart by weaving it into their classroom strategy. One teacher told Kidspot she now uses it to get her students’ attention: “Her maths teacher counts up to five and then waits for the kids to continue counting with ‘6…7,’ and then they all laugh.”
Another Year 5 teacher leaned into it too, telling the outlet, “I have said, ‘we are reading from page 6 and 7,’ and done the hand action, let everyone have a laugh, then returned to the task.” She even assigned a writing challenge where students had to explain the origin of the slang in exactly 67 words.
Others ran out of patience. A New South Wales teacher admitted she banned the phrase after trying to play along: “It’s that whole thing of the brain rot. They can’t explain what it means. That’s my two cents. That’s my 67 cents.”
If you’re looking for depth, you won’t find it here. “6 7” is meaningless by design, a playground password that makes sense to the people in on the joke and no one else. And for everyone else, well, consider it the latest reminder that we’re all firmly in the “back in my day” demographic.
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