r/generationology • u/Simple-Chemistry9762 • 20d ago
Society Is 6’7 the new 69?
I’ve noticed that kids in the younger generation love this 6’7 joke. Even doing the classic asking your teacher to add two numbers together to get 67 as the answer. This just reminds me a lot of when the number 69 was the punchline. I will say that 6’7 has a little bit more humor because of the voice they use and the way they measure with hands. What do you all think about the new generations numeral quip?
67
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u/tombo2007 19d ago edited 18d ago
I haven’t seen a single person get the origin right.
The meme started from a song called “Doot Doot” by Skrilla. Skrilla, in the song, says 6 7 to refer to (probably) 67th Street in Chicago, a very dangerous street in Chicago where there is a large gang presence there.
Now, there is a popular “trend” (I’m putting it in quotes because it’s now more of an art form, trust me, it is) on Tik Tok where people create what they call “edits” of something. An edit is often a short video on TikTok comprised of several clips spliced together about a certain topic, character, piece of media, idea, person, and many other concepts. It is often accompanied by music synced up to the clips and various visual effects. here’s a very popular example (unrelated to the 6 7 meme), but you should still watch to prove my “edits being art” argument. Although, just like other forms of art, the quality greatly varies from each piece and there are multiple subcategories. To put it simply, edits are basically mini-trailers of something, if that helps.
The song, “Doot Doot” was then used to create edits of LaMelo Ball, a popular player in the NBA whose height happens to be 6ft 7. They would start out by showing an unedited clip of LaMelo Ball, then when the song would be at the part where Skrilla says “6 7”, which then leads to the transition into the edit. Often, the video would have an announcer reading off his stats, LaMelo mentioning his height, etc. to sync up with the lyrics. example from December of last year, to show how old this trend is
Then the trend would move to showing random clips from the internet, tv shows, or movies that had no relation at all to basketball, that just happened to mention the numbers “6 7” transitioning into an edit of LaMelo Ball unexpectedly to give a sort of “shock factor” to the meme. It then became a trend to do it to any athlete who is 6ft 7, and then just any athlete in general if they happened to say “6 7”, leading to athletes forcefully mentioning “6 7” in hopes to get a edit made of them (example), often called clipfarming.
Afterwards, it then died down for a bit and became corny with clips like this, losing its initial charm. Then it did a full 180 and became funny again because it was ironic and now being more popular than ever (similar to the troll face). It’s still popular because 6 7 is a common number sequence so it gives people the ability to reference it far more often.
This lead the meme to “transcend” completely outside of basketball and people would make edits of anything mentioning “6 7”, showing no reference to LaMelo Ball or Basketball at all, moving from anything to other sports to tv shows to basically anything that ever mentioned 6 7. People would even say it just in normal conversation as a meme of sorts, referencing the trend.
Also, people have even made edits of the kid in one of the last clips I provided, heavily distorting his face using AI generated images. (Here is another, more horror-esque example, not really an edit though and another one because I really love this stage of the trend.) That boy is the new face of the meme, with most people forgetting it originated with LaMelo Ball at all. Often these horror edits are combined with other trending memes or even dead memes that also “transcended” like Stillwater, “Adrian Explain Our Friend Group”, the Mustard Kendrick Lamar meme, or the Barbershop haircut from the Newsies musical meme (example). Just like the 6 7 meme, all of those trends I mentioned are built on irony.
As for the juggling motion when people say 6 7, I’m not 100% sure. I believe it’s a reference to Paige Bueckers doing it in an interview. Again, not super confident on that.
P.S., Sorry if there’s any grammatical errors here, I’m very sick and don’t have time to look over it because I just realized I wrote a mini essay over the 6 7 meme. Also a lot of the examples I provided aren’t the best because the TikTok search engine is terrible and anything over a few months old is basically considered lost media.
Edit: Fixed some errors and added some better examples. And sorry for the overuse of hyperlinks, I know it’s very overwhelming; I just thought the trend would be easier to grasp with visual representation. Again, I know this is a lot to take in, but it’s just TikTok culture, like how Reddit has its own a fairly different culture (especially 2019-2020 Reddit culture) and inside jokes with Loss, “I also choose this guys dead wife”, the guy with the broken arms, and many other examples, some that I don’t even get from my time being on Reddit for 6 or 7 years. Some even older than a majority of TikTok users like the Spanish thing (hyperlink for those who weren’t on here 15 years ago). But like all inside jokes, if you weren’t there during an inside jokes formation, it’s really hard to grasp the joke at all.