6’7” Is Not Random
I walked into the grocery shop the other day and saw a soda can labeled “6-7” and “Brainrot.”
I stared at it, confused. My partner took a deep look and explained that these are the biggest words on the internet right now. “Brainrot” is self-explanatory, she said, but “6 7” apparently comes from a viral video of a guy yelling “6 7! 6 7!” referring to someone of that height. So, naturally, it became a thing.
I lingered on it for a while. I’ve seen a lot of videos where people yell stuff. So have you. But why this? Why 6’7”?
Here is why: It isn’t random. It is a specific signal from a generation living through a structural collapse.
The world used to be mainly linear. You could get a job, find a partner, buy a house, make babies, and live happily ever after. You barely needed a mortgage. Elite education was accessible to almost everyone. And most importantly, 10% extra effort correlated with 10% extra pay.
Today, the math is different. Even I, post-MSc in Electrical Engineering, sometimes wonder what it was all for. I watch people who barely graduated get hundreds of millions thrown at them because they have, at worst, “an idea,” or at best, a product that caught a quick tailwind and will eventually go to zero.
I have to credit the USA for at least putting fraudsters like SBF and Elizabeth Holmes in prison. But here in Sweden? You can blow up $15 billion, cause 8 deaths, put $200 million in your pocket, and disappear. It makes me wonder why I didn’t just stick to my childhood room, playing video games and eating Whopper Pepper meals. I loved that. And it was actually pretty cheap.
But I was lucky. I got to experience the tail end of linearity.
Growing up today means navigating total non-linearity. Someone spewing garbage or having sex with “1000 guys in under 24h” can make more money in a week than a doctor or professor makes in a lifetime.
The inflation isn’t just monetary; it’s existential. Especially for men.
Are you under 6 feet? Worthless.
6’2”? Mediocre.
Unless you are 6’7”, don’t even bother.
“6 7” is not what we, the older privileged generations, interpret as a senseless meme. It is a scream. It is a massive protest by Gen Z against a world where nothing matters anymore.
Let me be clear:
In the 1990s, a “middle-class job” was enough to buy a house. Being “6 feet” was enough to be tall.
In the 2020s, the middle has been hollowed out.
To be “wealthy” now requires a crypto-exit or a tech IPO (The Economic 6’7”).
To be “famous” requires global virality (The Social 6’7”).
To be “attractive” requires filters and surgery (The Aesthetic 6’7”).
In other words, it is the perfect expression of Heightflation. It represents a world where the requirements to “win” have drifted beyond the reach of human effort.
The reason we don’t get it is because we lost our adulthood. We aren’t the captains of the ship; we are egocentric dinos clinging to our wealth, disgracing the younger generations and discrediting everything they do as “senseless.”
But hey, maybe we can make some money on this. Let’s sell some cans of soda with “6 7” printed on them.
6 7.
6⁄7 seems to me a continuation of a pattern that I think has gone on since the birth of humanity or before: kids like to annoy/confuse adults. Growing up, that’s where “dude” came from: it was taken from surf culture, and it annoyed our parents. Now I find it as a regular part of my speech. For my son’s friends, bruh, and bro got regular use because to Xers like me, it was associated with sounding dumb and insincere.
Now my nephew says 6⁄7. The fact that it confuses and annoys adults is just totally the point.
Nothing can make it go away faster than us using it. Once adults are in on the joke, it loses all meaning.
I am afraid that the meme was created well before being applied to basketball players and thus doesn’t mean anything like “Unless you are 6’7”, don’t even bother”. That being said, stuff like total nonlinearity or the two-contour economy, as in South Korea, is a real issue that would have to be solved had it not been for the imminent rise of AI.