6-7, pronounced as six-seven, is a meme that dates back all the way to December 2024, when rapper Skrilla released the song “Doot Doot.” Now, almost a year later, 6-7 has evolved into something greater.
6-7 has become a sensation. It has become one of the most popular memes of the decade and it inspired talk of the “Great Meme Hyperinflation” in reference to an influx of memes that seem to have no substance or merit behind them.
More recently, 6-7 reentered the headlines for the second time this fall. The first time was on Oct.16, when Comedy Central’s “South Park” dedicated an entire episode to the meme. The second was on Oct. 28, when Dictionary.com announced that 6-7 would be crowned the Word of the Year, beating out words such as “aura farming,” “kiss cam,” and “overtourism.”
According to Dictionary.com, “To select the 2025 Word of the Year, our lexicographers analyzed a large amount of data including newsworthy headlines, trends on social media, search engine results, and more to identify words that made an impact on our conversations, online and in the real world.”
6-7 matched these standards. Two numbers beat words for the Word of the Year title.
What is 6-7?
6-7 began as a double entendre in Skrilla’s “Doot Doot,” in which the artist raps “6-7, I just bipped right off the highway,” as a reference to both the artist’s ties to 67 Street in Philadelphia and the police code 10-67, which signifies that there has been a death, according to Genius.
Although the term first emerged from Skrilla, the term quickly took on a new meaning as users of TikTok began to implement the idea of 6-7 into their content.
Popular Overtime Elite League basketball player, Taylen Kinney, began to popularize the term both on TikTok and in basketball culture after adding the “weighing two options” motion to the meme. Kinney even went as far as to make his own brand surrounding the meme: 6 7 Water.
Over time, the term took on many meanings and could be used by different individuals in a plethora of scenarios, so the term itself became indefinable. In fact, Dictionary.com said, “the most defining feature of 67 is that it’s impossible to define. It’s meaningless, ubiquitous, and nonsensical. In other words, it has all the hallmarks of brainrot.”
Why is 6-7 so popular?
How can two simple numbers evolve into something else entirely? Anthony Guarino, a freshman art, design, and interactive multimedia major, gave his insight on how 6-7 became so popular.
“It comes up in daily life and it’s something you wouldn’t expect to be made into a joke…I think that’s why a lot of people are still referencing it,” Guarino said.
In a world so connected by social media, it’s not a shock that something so random and seemingly meaningless can become so widespread and mainstream.
The number 67 can appear anywhere at any time in a way no other meme can. From the battery percentage on your phone, to the point tally in a SHU basketball game—6-7 is everywhere. As a fast-growing meme it can leak out of the digital world and into the physical world.
And yet, this is the first time a meme like 6-7 has ever been made the Dictionary.com Word of the Year, proving just how famous or infamous the phrase has become.
SHU students have their own thoughts to offer on the choice and the meme as a whole.
“I think I am a [6-7] convert,” Gabriel Sanders, a freshman cognitive and behavioral neuroscience major, said. “I used to think it was overused, and then I started overusing it, and now I think it’s funny.”
Sanders wasn’t the only student to express a positive opinion.
“I say it, like, 67 times a day,” Taylor Woodside, a freshman biology major, said. “I just like to make the joke.”
For some students, it’s even reminiscent of previous memes. Ammar Mutjaba, a sophomore biology major, compared the popularity of 6-7 to that of the “9 + 10 = 21” meme made popular on defunct social media platform Vine in June 2013.
“It’s been, like, reinvented for 6-7,” Mujtaba said. “I say 6-7 probably, like, ten times a week.”
But it wasn’t all love. Some students have simply become tired of the joke.
“I think it’s overused, and I honestly don’t really get it,” Julia Solomon, a senior business management and marketing major, said. “My professor was saying ‘you might want to post, like, six or seven times a week’ and everybody started laughing, even though they’re seniors.”
Abil Hamded, a sophomore biology major, is in full agreement.
“It’s getting to the point where it is getting overused,” he said. “If I hear one of my friends saying 6-7, I’ll probably slap them.”
But the division among the students can’t change the results. 6-7 is now a Dictionary.com Word of the Year, joining the ranks of historically powerful words such as allyship (2021), pandemic (2020), and xenophobia (2016).
While memes tend to come and go, 6-7 has certainly made its impact. But SHU students might be saying a new brain-rot phrase sooner than we think. Let’s check in again in six or seven months.
Matthew Koroski is a writer for The Setonian’s Features section. He can be reached at matthew.koroski@student.shu.edu.
