“I prefer 6-7 to brainrot,” I tell my husband.
“6-7 is brainrot,” he responds.
“No, no. It’s like…knowing…irreverent…6-7, 6-7,” I say, as I waggle my hands back and forth.
And that, folks, sums up in a nutshell what millennials have done to the latest Gen Alpha nonsense meme: co-opted it, overanalyzed it, turned it into something cute and “grammable,” when it is, in fact, neither cute nor something one can even define.
For the uninitiated, 6-7 is an expression that kids in the Alpha-Z crossover have glommed onto in recent months. It maybe means “so-so.” Or maybe it has to do with a basketball player’s height. But mostly it means nothing—simply a marker of existing in a certain time and place. Like wearing Reebok Pumps or horsey-dancing to Gangnam Style.
My 10-year-old son brought it home from summer camp in July, and it’s only grown among his milieu since, with kids on his baseball and soccer team screaming it on the field or in passing at practice, almost as if using it to fill a silence will earn them street cred.
Jen Uva, a 5th grade teacher in Brooklyn agrees, saying it’s pervasive. “I personally find it comical and make fun of it every time kids say it—usually in a silly voice with hand motions.” But, she acknowledges, her colleagues are divided. “The opinions are VERY varied.”
In short, parents hate it, teachers roll their eyes at it and that, perhaps, is the point. Or was…until FOMO-anxious millennials decided they (we) just had to hop on board.
I first noticed the adult 6-7 push in the lead-up to Halloween, when I started seeing pumpkins around my neighborhood with the notorious numbers in place of a jack-o-lantern face. The costumes came next, with knowing grownups frantically hot-gluing sixes and sevens to their sweatshirts and The Cut noting that “adults are ruining 6-7 for Halloween.” (Although to be fair, my son’s teachers dressed as a “6” and “7” respectively, and he basically treated it like they were Heidi Klum in a worm suit.)
Then there were the marketing ploys. Brands like Pizza Hut, Dominos and Del Taco jumped to offer promotions at various denominations of…well, you get it. The high-school-basketball-player-cum-influencer Taylen Kinney launched a 67 water, which sold out so quickly it is now waitlist only. Fenty Beauty and Lyft capitalized on their socials.
Then came the news anchors and old-white-guy late night hosts, either aping the meme or explaining it away. (“The word of the year has to be a word, not numbers,” scolded Colbert.)
But the true death knell was exactly that: When dictionary.com crowned 6-7 the 2025 winner last week, it all but ensured its demise, sparking cringe-inducing discussions of how it’s spelled (Dash? No dash?) and what part of speech we might ascribe it to. (I’m no linguist, but clearly it’s an adjective.)
And now, it’s officially jumped the shark, with lame parents attempting it and embarrassed kids retreating; a colleague told me of the deep loathing in her daughter’s eyes when, on the eve of her seventh birthday, her dad joked that she was now “6-7.” And my kids looked on in horror as 40-somethings muscled each other out of the way for selfies at the 6.7-mile marker of the New York City Marathon.
So what’s a disaffected 10-year-old to do? Leave it for the grownups, my son suggests. Anyway, kids are already onto the next thing, 41, whatever that means.
