Is “Six Seven” Really Brain Rot?

Recently, my woman was texting with a person who lives successful Singapore. The quality from the different broadside of the satellite turned retired to beryllium that kids determination had discovered “six seven.” On Halloween, our person reported, a lad with a handmade “six seven” jersey had earned applause arsenic helium made his mode done her neighborhood—a spot that’s a agelong mode from Sixty-seventh Street successful Philadelphia, which the rapper Skrilla whitethorn person been referencing successful his opus “Doot Doot (6 7),” which came retired past December. Since then, kids of each ages person been inexplicably entertaining themselves by saying “six seven” astatine each opportunity, ideally with a lilt connected the “seven” and a small wiggly manus motion. My lad Peter tells maine that kids person been saying it truthful overmuch successful his second-grade classroom—not conscionable during mathematics acquisition but passim the day—that it’s been banned. (He’s nether the impression, surely erroneous, that “six seven” has been prohibited astatine each schoolhouse connected Long Island.)

“What is ‘six seven,’ anyway?” I asked him, not agelong ago.

“It’s encephalon rot,” helium said, confidently.

I followed up: “What’s encephalon rot?”

“It’s random worldly from the net that fills up your brain,” helium said.

If you’re attentive to language, you mightiness announcement that the meaning of “brain rot” has shifted since 2024, erstwhile Oxford University Press named it Word of the Year. Back then, it was described arsenic a authorities of intelligence deterioration brought connected by immersion successful “trivial oregon unchallenging” online information. Now encephalon rot is simply a contented category: successful the wildly fashionable video crippled Steal a Brainrot, for example, players bargain oregon seizure “Brainrots,” which are surreal A.I.-generated characters with—for immoderate reason—Italianesque names. When Peter and his friends aren’t saying “six seven” sotto voce, truthful arsenic to debar teacherly detection, they’re talking astir “Chimpanzini Bananini!” oregon “Ballerina Cappuccina!”

The lawsuit for seeing “six seven” arsenic encephalon rot is strong. In a masterly relationship of the phrase’s origins successful the Wall Street Journal, Ellen Gamerman explains however Skrilla’s “Doot Doot (6 7)” was utilized to soundtrack video edits of LaMelo Ball, an N.B.A. constituent defender who is six feet seven; these, Gamerman writes, inspired a video, filmed courtside astatine a schoolhouse hoops game, successful which “a lad with forward-swept hair . . . lurches toward the camera and delivers a giddy ‘six seven,’ ” implicit with manus gestures. This clip was shared and remixed, and the saying dispersed until it became a mysterious portion of popular culture. (Actually, it was a enigma adjacent successful Skrilla’s song: observers person asked whether it mightiness person signified Sixty-seventh Street successful Chicago, alternatively than Philadelphia, oregon referred to 10-67, the codification that constabulary usage to study a dormant body.)

“Six seven,” successful short, seems to beryllium an internet-based phenomenon, babelike upon the societal media successful which we’re each enmeshed; possibly this means it’s conscionable different ripple successful the oversea of monetized inanity. On November 6th and 7th, from six to 7 P.M., McDonald’s restaurants successful the United Arab Emirates gave distant orders of “six seven” McNuggets (that is, of 7 nuggets successful a six-piece box). “Meaningless, ubiquitous, and nonsensical,” the lexicographers of Dictionary.com argue, “six seven” is “the logical endpoint of being perpetually online, scrolling endlessly, consuming contented fed to users by algorithms trained by different algorithms.” They’ve named it their Word of the Year for 2025.

There are reasons, though, to deliberation that “six seven” is not really encephalon rot. One striking information is that, contempt its online origins, the operation isn’t utilized online. No 1 types it into a radical chat, hoping that others volition benignant it back. There’d beryllium nary point—“six seven” is thing you accidental successful person, retired loud, successful a group, successful unison. It has physicality. It’s not contented to beryllium consumed. It’s a opus and dance.

The senselessness of “six seven” contributes to the content of encephalon rot. “It’s absurd and random,” the histrion Elizabeth Olsen said recently, connected “Late Night with Seth Meyers.” This is surely true—and yet linguists, anthropologists, and sociologists person agelong known that overmuch of what we accidental is meaningless. In 1923, successful a seminal effort titled “The Problem of Meaning successful Primitive Languages,” the anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski observed that, whenever radical get together, they speech astir a full batch of nothing. “As overmuch among savage tribes arsenic successful a European drawing-room,” helium wrote, societal beingness involves a batch of speech successful which meaning “is astir wholly irrelevant”: “Inquiries astir health, comments connected weather, affirmations of immoderate supremely evident authorities of things—all specified are exchanged, not successful bid to inform,” and “certainly not successful bid to explicit immoderate thought,” but conscionable to make “ties of union.”