“Logo text For those who found themselves perplexed while watching this week’s season 28 premiere of South Park by the strange new trend at the local elementary school, where kids keep saying “6, 7” to their own inscrutable delight: you are not alone. Our nation’s teachers, parents and one writer of recaps of a socio-political”, — write: www.hollywoodreporter.com
For those who found themselves perplexed while watching this week’s season 28 premiere of South Park by the strange new trend at the local elementary school, where kids keep saying “6, 7” to their own inscrutable delight: you are not alone. Our nation’s teachers, parents and one writer of recaps of a socio-political animated show were also perplexed by the trend, which had a fictionalized version of tech guru political operative Peter Thiel saying a phrase uttered by a secret South Park Elementary cult.
Explaining exactly why this particular trend, like so many confounding memes and viral nonsense, will travel unbelievably far on the web, and elsewhere, is as easy as painting wind. And why uttering “6, 7” with a look of confusion, which has caught fire with so many young people nationwide, was worked into the plot of South Park is essentially impossible to understand, because it’s unknowable. However, its origins and astronomical growth over the past few weeks are a lot easier to explain.
The phrase “6, 7” initially appeared in a track by rapper Skrilla, titled “Doot Doot,” which was released in December 2024. Months later, multiple TikTok videos used the track in clips that went viral on the platform, drilling it into the consciousness of American youth in an awe-inspiring and perhaps deeply concerning way that TikTok videos can. Included in the edit were a sports clip of Charlotte Hornets’ basketball player LaMelo Ball, who stands 6 feet 7 inches tall, and another clip featuring a tween and some fellow tween basketball fans shouting the numbers while waving their palms up and down courtside at a game.
The meme at that point was out of the hands of the creators and fell to the people of the internet, a crowd that we know by now sinks low and does so quickly. And when the question was posed, what does “6, 7” mean, exactly? “Nothing,” was the resounding answer that was landed upon. Don’t know the answer to a math question? “6, 7.” Asked if you’d like the chicken or the fish, but can’t decide? That’s a “6, 7,” but be sure to make a shrugging motion (surely, you Gen Xers remember this guy: ¯_(ツ)_/¯ ). And so on, until teachers and parents begin to lose their freakin’ minds.
Is this, as the The Wall Street Journal recently described it, akin to if absurdist-existentialist philosopher Albert Camus had a TikTok, given his firm grasp of meaninglessness? Or is it a prime example of internet rot — a term used to describe the chaotic, surreal and nonsensical decay increasingly found in online culture? The phrase “6, 7” is one with no fixed meaning but is shorthand for confusion, repetition and an ironic detachment from logic. It’s a way for younger generations to express feelings of meaninglessness, anxiety and overstimulation. Fun, but just wait until they’re assigned to read The Stranger in high school.
On the internet, such a placeholder for nothing will, over a period of time — and in the instance of this meme, very little time — become meaningful. That’s because, as it’s repeated, the masses will start treating the meme as if it’s imbued with meaning. Online trends tend to start from chaos and gain momentum without explanation: For example, “404 Not Found” went from a nonsense phrase found on a dead-end page of the web to become a meme when placed on the image of your choice, to go on to become slang for a clueless or ineffective person And then there’s the “Me when the” meme, which once upon a time, occupied this space as the ultimate saying for when you don’t know what to say or when you
These memes, of course, feel like ancient history and are in internet years — not heard or used in web communities or in real life very much or at all anymore. So for those being driven batty by “6, 7,” this too shall pass. But it will forever be memorialized in a South Park episode, which can’t be said for any of the aforementioned memes of meaningless, so good job, Gen Z, or actually, to bridge one letter-based generation to another: “¯_(ツ)_/¯ 6, 7.”
