My favorite comparison is to genxers hanging out their tongues and saying, WAZZAAAAP. When I hear adults getting all fussy and weird about it, I remind them of WAZZAAAP and ask them if they really think kids these days invented brain rot?
Today I was teaching my third graders the game All Ten (which, give it a try, it’s pretty fun and more challenging than you’d think). In the game, you use four given digits to create expressions equalling every value from one to ten. We’d done most of them, and a kid had gotten to the point where she’d combined (4+4-1), and had only a 1 left; so I asked her, “I see how you could get seven, or six, out of this. Which do you want to try? Six? Seven?” and I made the hand gesture.
Oh, the looks the students gave me, equal parts admiration and horror. I love my job.
For over a month now. It’s annoyed my wife and I so I have been saying it to our kids and using the hand gesture as often as I can in any context remotely related to it.
It’s working. I am sucking the fun out of it for my teenagers. HA! Parenting can be fun.
Adults use of lame puns is almost as bad and I do the same thing to them.
If you are a teacher dealing with this just say, “In my time 6-7 meant a person just pooped themselves.” and from then on react accordingly whenever it comes up.
It’s neat to read your insights of the youths where you are, in Luxembourg, Germany et al. I suppose like much slang, it’s a code to avoid having adult listeners come down on them. It sounds like a shifty equivalent of ‘Whatever - I don’t care!’
I actually just used it in a regular sentence and they acted all shocked and amused and said that I can’t say that anymore. They wouldn’t explain further
Gen Alpha slang and memes move so fast they don’t need any help picking up speed. Like I said, 6–7 is already well on its way to ancient history, and “41” is the new numerical slang. Though if I’ve caught wind of it at 50, it’s probably already passé. What fascinates me is how rapid-fire all this cultural and linguistic ephemera has become, and how the internet leveled the playing field. Adults can look up slang in seconds, something our parents couldn’t do. That old sense of teen slang as a secret code isn’t quite the same anymore.
Nerding out here, but I’d be surprised if there wasn’t some study about this - do these slang expressions and fad catch phrases/memes have different trajectories in the current era than they used to?
You’re old enough to have seen this show, but if you blinked too long, you probably missed it. Ran for five unfunny episodes. First place I ever heard “No soap, radio.”
Funniest thing in Avengers:Endgame when Hulk dabs.
I’ve been wondering when this was going to come up on the board. it hadn’t started yet last school year, and I retired at the end of the year. I’ve been subbing this year and have heard it, but not that much. Today I saw a kindegartener make the two numbers out of Play-Doh. My daughter has heard it plenty in Chicago schools, but says she’s no-sold it.
In my Algebra II class, after chapter 5 (Polynomials), I did chapter 8 (Rational Functions), because that seemed the most natural progression to me. One of my students asked about it before class. Later that period, some other students mentioned the skipped chapters, and I told them that so-and-so had already asked about 6, 7.
I’ve read that the ultimate origin was a reference to some basketball player who’s 6’7" tall. But even if that was the origin, it’s moved on well past that. And contrary to folks saying how fast-moving slang is these days, I’m amazed that “6 7” has stuck around as long as it has: It’s had an awfully long life for something that doesn’t actually mean anything.
