Teachers Are Getting Very Tired of 6 and 7

A viral meme featuring the numbers six and seven is turning classrooms across the country into chaotic echo chambers, much to the dismay of teachers. The trend, simply called "six seven," involves students shouting the numbers and performing a signature hand gesture any time the digits appear together in schoolwork or are mentioned together in any context, the Wall Street Journal reports. Math teacher Cara Bearden describes the phenomenon as "like throwing catnip at cats," forcing educators to avoid any reference to the numbers six and seven in sequence, though some go the other way and devise tests where all the answers involve sixes and sevens.

"I told my students that if they yell out 'six seven' during main academic time and it interrupts the class, then for homework they have to write 'I will not say six seven in class,' six to seven times," one teacher said in a TikTok video, per the Miami Herald. The trend has been bubbling for about six or seven months, with its roots traced to rapper Skrilla's song "Doot Doot (6 7)"— a nod to 67th Street in Philadelphia. The phrase spread further after a viral video of a boy enthusiastically saying "six seven" at a basketball game and performing the gesture, which the Journal describes as "somewhere between juggling and melon handling."

Forbes reports that some are characterizing the meme as meaningless "brain rot" like the "Skibidi" fad. Skrilla, whose latest tour is attracting big crowds, says: "I never put an actual meaning on it, and I still would not want to," he says. "That's why everybody keeps saying it." Asked by the Journal if he has a message for kids shouting "six seven" in classrooms, he says, "Six seven."

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The plot of the South Park episode that aired Wednesday focused on the trend, depicting Peter Thiel, visiting South Park Elementary to share his thoughts on the Antichrist, suspecting demonic numerology was involved. "Explaining exactly why this particular trend, like so many confounding memes and viral nonsense, will travel unbelievably far on the web, and elsewhere, is as easy as painting wind," writes Kevin Dolak at the Hollywood Reporter, noting that unlike many long-forgotten and equally meaningless memes of the past, this one will "forever be memorialized in a South Park episode."