There’s a kid at a basketball game screaming “six seven” into a camera and somehow this becomes the meme that breaks teachers’ brains worldwide.
Parents are on Reddit begging for translations. School staff are implementing bans. And every single adult demanding an explanation is missing the point so spectacularly it’s almost beautiful.
Here’s what nobody wants to admit: Gen Alpha might be the smartest generation yet when it comes to language. Not despite the meaningless memes. Because of them.
When that 12-year-old yelled “6 7” and went viral, we weren’t watching the death of communication. We were watching kids who’ve cracked a code about how language actually works in 2025. And it’s making everyone over 25 deeply uncomfortable.
Nothing Means Everything Now
Look, previous generations had their thing. Millennials perfected the art of the curated Instagram aesthetic.
Everything had to mean something, preferably something deep and authentic. Gen Z came along and demanded radical transparency, “keeping it 100,” calling out the fake.
Then Gen Alpha showed up, looked at this exhausting sincerity competition, and said “nah”.
They’d already seen through sigma slang, where kids claimed to be mysterious lone wolves whilst posting about it constantly online.
The irony was already baked in. But “6 7” just goes further. It doesn’t even pretend to mean anything. That’s the entire point.
This isn’t actually new, by the way. After World War I, the Dada art movement did basically the same thing.
Artists looked at a world that had just slaughtered millions over nothing and decided logic was overrated.
They made art that was deliberately nonsensical because sense had failed them.
Gen Alpha’s doing that except their trauma is algorithmic. They’ve grown up watching adults lose their minds over which TikTok video to believe.
They’ve inherited a dying planet and an economy that can’t promise them anything. Meaningless memes might actually be the sanest response available.
You’re Either In or You’re Not
@mrcoachwhitehead and that’s what that means! #fyp #foryou #teachersoftiktok #education #highschoolteacher ♬ original sound – eazye_editz
Every slang term carries weight, right? When Gen Z started saying “delulu” or talking about rizz, those words still did something. You could use them in sentences. They communicated actual ideas, even if your mum didn’t understand them.
“6 7” doesn’t do that.
It’s pure gatekeeping, and that’s the genius of it. You either know or you don’t. If you have to ask, you’ve failed.
There’s no translation guide that will help you because the not-knowing is the boundary.
Dr. Lauren Fairhurst told CNN this reflects our “post-truth society” where interpretation matters more than meaning. Maybe.
But I think she’s being too kind to the rest of us. Gen Alpha isn’t confused about truth.
They’ve just watched adults spend a decade arguing about objective reality and decided the whole framework is broken.
Why bother with clarity when you’ve seen politicians twist language into pretzels? When every brand’s “authentic voice” is focus-grouped to death? When being earnest online just makes you a target?
The knowing wink is the only honest communication left.
What Teachers Get Wrong About Disruption
Schools are banning “6 7” like it’s contraband. Teachers call it disruptive, distracting, proof that kids can’t focus anymore.
But wait. When linguist Taylor Jones talked to CNN about this, he made a point everyone seems to be ignoring.
Every generation creates slang that baffles the previous one. “Cool” was once rebellious teenager nonsense. So was “groovy.” So was literally every term that’s now so normal we forget it was ever weird.
The difference with “6 7” is that it doesn’t want to be understood. It’s not asking for acceptance into proper English. It’s not trying to communicate anything except “you’re not invited to this conversation.”
And actually? That takes incredible social intelligence.
Think about what kids are doing when they use this phrase. They’re reading rooms. Testing boundaries. Building alliances. Excluding threats. Those are skills corporate leadership courses charge thousands to teach. Gen Alpha’s learning it in break time.
Teachers see disruption. What’s actually happening is children navigating complex social hierarchies in real time, using a linguistic tool that adults have no access to. That’s not stupidity. That’s strategic.
Maybe Brainrot Is Self-Care
Everyone loves throwing around “brainrot” like it’s a diagnosis. As if these kids are decomposing from the inside because they watch Skibidi Toilet and communicate in numbers.
Here’s another way to look at it.
Gen Alpha has never known a world without screens. They’ve been tracked by algorithms since before they could spell “algorithm”.
They’ve watched every adult in their life become addicted to phones, doomscrolling, outrage cycles. They’ve inherited climate catastrophe and been told it’s their job to fix it.
What if meaningless memes are actually healthy?
When the world is absurd but pretends to make sense, embracing the absurdity without pretending might be the most honest thing you can do.
Research from Cambridge backs this up – humour functions as a coping mechanism for stress and anxiety. Gen Alpha didn’t invent that. They just industrialised it.
We’re calling it brainrot. They might be calling it survival.
Nobody’s Authentic Anymore (So Why Pretend?)
Social media built an empire on authenticity. Influencers make millions looking “real”. Brands spend fortunes trying to seem “relatable”. Everyone’s performing naturalness, which creates the most artificial environment imaginable.
Gen Alpha sees it. They watched older kids craft perfect personas and burn out by 19. They’ve seen the depression rates that come from treating your life like content.
They’ve watched YouTube apology videos and TikTok breakdowns and Instagram vulnerability posts that somehow still feel staged.
Their response? Make it so obvious that it’s performance that nobody can accuse you of faking.
“6 7” is performance art where everyone’s in on the joke. There’s no pretending it means something deep.
No individual trying to be the main character. It’s just play. Pure, stupid, meaningless play in a world that forgot how to do that.
And honestly, that might be the most radical thing they could do.
Language Is Moving Faster Than Dictionaries Can Handle
The Cambridge Dictionary recently added “skibidi” and “delulu”. Actual dictionary editors looked at these terms and decided they mattered enough to be official. Five years ago, neither word existed.
That’s the speed we’re working at now. Lexicographers are basically just trying not to fall too far behind.
But “6 7” probably won’t make it into any dictionary. It’ll be dead before the approval process finishes. And that’s exactly its power.
It exists in this ephemeral space between sound and text, meaningful only in its moment, gone the second too many adults try to pin it down.
Language has always evolved. But it used to take centuries for a word to shift meaning or die out. Now it happens in months. Gen Alpha isn’t destroying English.
They’re just running it at the speed their world actually moves.
The Real Genius: Keeping Something for Themselves
Every subculture in history has used language to mark boundaries. Cockney rhyming slang existed specifically to confuse outsiders.
Hip-hop vocabulary protected the culture from appropriation, at least for a while. Even academic jargon serves the same purpose – separating those who know from those who don’t.
Gen Alpha learned this faster than anyone expected. They watched millennials moan about Gen Z slang, saw how quickly everything got co-opted and commercialised, and decided to build something more slippery.
The “Mason 67” stereotype is proof they’re even self-aware about it. That’s a term for a white kid who overuses the phrase. They’re not just in on the meme.
They’re commenting on being in on the meme whilst still being in on it. Most adults never achieve that level of meta-awareness, and these are 12-year-olds doing it casually.
Why Adults Demanding Answers Reveals More About Us
When parents and teachers demand to know what “6 7” means, we’re not really asking for a definition. We’re demanding control. The power to decode, categorise, file away into something manageable.
Gen Alpha’s refusal isn’t disrespect.
It’s boundary-setting. It’s claiming space in a world where adults monitor every click, every post, every message. It’s carving territory that belongs to them alone. And honestly, good for them. They need something that’s theirs.
The genius isn’t in the phrase. It’s in the refusal. By giving adults nothing solid to grab onto, they’ve created something genuinely unknowable in an age where everything is tracked and analysed and monetised and turned into content.
That’s actually quite beautiful if you can get past being annoyed by it.
This Will All Be Over Soon (And That’s Fine)
“6 7” is already fading. Something else will replace it. Then something else after that. The cycle continues forever or until the internet collapses, whichever comes first.
Gen Alpha will grow up. They’ll become the confused adults wondering what Gen Beta is saying. They’ll probably be just as baffled and annoyed. That’s how this works.
But what they’re establishing now matters. They’re proving language doesn’t have to be transactional. Communication doesn’t have to convey information. Sometimes talking is just for connection, for play, for the pure joy of making sounds with your mouth that create belonging.
That’s not revolutionary. Humans have always done this. We just forgot somewhere along the way, got too obsessed with efficiency and clarity and making sure everything serves a purpose.
Gen Alpha remembers what adults forgot. Language started as sounds and gestures long before anyone invented grammar. Play is how humans learn everything actually worth knowing. The point isn’t always the point.
Teachers will stop banning it eventually. Parents will stop googling. And by then, these kids will have moved onto something new, leaving the rest of us scrambling to catch up again.
That’s not a bug. That’s the design. The kids are fine. Better than fine. They’re sharper than we give them credit for, and our confusion is evidence the strategy’s working perfectly.
Maybe instead of trying to understand “6 7”, we should ask why we need to understand it so badly. What are we actually afraid of when children create something we can’t control?
That question matters more than any definition ever could.
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- Living Delulu: How Gen Z Turned Fantasy Into a Lifestyle When irrational confidence becomes a survival strategy for an anxious generation.
- Sigma Slang: The Lone Wolf, The Meme, and Why You Keep Hearing It From macho internet fantasy to classroom joke, how “sigma” lost all meaning and gained everything.
- Skibidi Meaning: From Gibberish Meme to Gen Alpha’s Cultural Cornerstone How singing toilets became the defining symbol of a generation raised online.
- Type Shi Meaning on TikTok: The Slang Phrase That Means More Than You Think Memphis slang meets TikTok culture in this phrase that refuses simple definition.
- Fanum Tax: The Evolution of Internet Culture Through Gen Alpha’s Lexicon When stealing your friend’s snacks becomes a viral economic theory.