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Bonjour,

We’re streaming RN on Twitter with a bunch of fun guests, jump on in.

ily,

Writer: Natasha 
Editor: Deana

btw it’s good to build on Polygon.

A Gen Alpha meme that makes little to no sense hit the mainstream and then died this week.

If you have tweens or live on the internet you’ve been seeing/ hearing 6-7 for months now. It’s an IRL meme where kids will say 6-7 while moving their hands up and down with their palms up.

The meme originated from the song “Doot Doot (6 7)” by rapper Skrilla, which repeats “6-7” in its lyrics. The song wasn’t an immediate hit, but it and the phrase picked up steam after a fan edit using the audio with highlights of basketball player LaMelo Ball, who is, in fact, 6 feet 7 inches tall, went viral. It was ultimately popularized by the worst type of person in the world: an 8- to 11-year-old boy.

It’s become a sort of audio-visual tic for the youngsters, and the parents are asking:

Don’t be mistaken, the phrase doesn’t really have anything to do with height. It’s a catch-all term that signals iykyk, and what you know is that it means nothing.

This week, South Park did an episode, Kim Kardashian did a bit on Fallon, and The Wall Street Journal wrote an article about it, so it’s officially chopped and cooked.

This is a classic case of cool (arguable in this case) subculture hitting the mainstream and immediately losing any cultural cachet.

The idea of excorporation, the act of reclaiming and reworking mass-produced culture, and incorporation, the act of mainstream culture absorbing subculture and selling it back, has been studied by cultural thinkers and media scholars like John Fiske for decades. It’s not new, tiktok has just made it faster than ever.

As soon as the inside joke becomes the headline, someone’s going to try to sell you a T-shirt.