Is "Six Seven" Really Brain Rot?

"Recently, my wife was texting with a friend who lives in Singapore. The news from the other side of the world turned out to be that kids there had discovered "six seven." On Halloween, our friend reported, a boy with a handmade "six seven" jersey had earned applause as he made his way through her neighborhood-a place that's a long way from Sixty-seventh Street in Philadelphia."

"Since then, kids of all ages have been inexplicably entertaining themselves by saying 'six seven' at every opportunity, ideally with a lilt on the 'seven' and a little wiggly hand motion. My son Peter tells me that kids have been saying it so much in his second-grade classroom-not just during math instruction but throughout the day-that it's been banned. (He's under the impression, certainly erroneous, that 'six seven' has been prohibited at every school on Long Island.)"

"If you're attentive to language, you might notice that the meaning of " brain rot" has shifted since 2024, when Oxford University Press named it Word of the Year. Back then, it was described as a state of mental deterioration brought on by immersion in 'trivial or unchallenging' online information. Now brain rot is a content category: in the wildly popular video game Steal a Brainrot, for example, players buy or capture 'Brainrots,' which are surreal A.I.-generated characters with-for some reason-Italianesque names."

Nonsensical phrases like "six seven" have spread internationally among children, who repeat them with gestures and vocal inflection as a form of play. The meme appeared from diverse sources and surfaced in neighborhoods far from any obvious origin, gaining applause and homemade jerseys. Repetition can become disruptive enough that schools ban the phrase. Children describe 'brain rot' as random online content that 'fills up your brain.' The term's meaning has shifted: once defined as mental deterioration from trivial online content, 'brain rot' now names an entertainment category, exemplified by the game Steal a Brainrot featuring surreal A.I.-generated characters.

Read at The New Yorker