If you haven’t heard, Dictionary’s word of the year is 6-7 (even though it’s numbers). This is a trend I’ve been noticing for a while, where over the last few years the word of the year has shifted away from big cultural events or news to internet lingo. In 2019, Oxford’s word was “climate emergency,” but the past three years have been “brain rot,” “rizz,” and “goblin mode.” It’s not about what’s going on in the world anymore, it’s about the biggest thing that happened on the internet.
Why Is This The Trend?
6-7 isn’t new, but people really started referencing it in May of this year. “6 7” is mentioned in the song Doot Doot by rapper Skrilla, which then began to trend in basketball culture and TikTok. Watch this video if you still have no idea what I’m talking about. If you read more into what 6 7 actually means, you’ll find that it doesn’t really mean anything at all, making it the first word of the year from Dictionary that doesn’t actually have a definition. It doesn’t really matter what the word means anymore, just that it’s part of the internet zeitgeist.
I think trends used to reflect what was going on in the world (in 2020 the word of the year was “pandemic”), but now it’s shared context that’s born out of TikTok. Now kids are saying it in front of their teachers and parents, and it’s showing up in South Park episodes. Trends that start in niche communities have the potential to become mainstream and define pop culture, and even become the word of the year.
How Youth Culture is Changing
Ten years ago, youth culture looked completely different. In 2015, everything was about curation and aesthetics, spending hours editing photos for a single Instagram post. Being online meant showing that you had taste, not that you were in on a joke. Trends moved slower, and there was still a clear line between online and offline identity. Memes really started to shift that, and the curation of the meme became the best part of it. Today’s youth culture is chaotic, chronically online, and intentionally unserious. The internet drives culture, and it’s more true today than ever.
The Big Takeaway
6-7 being the word of the year shows how culture has fully shifted online. What used to come from major events now comes from shared internet moments. Youth culture isn’t about perfection anymore, it’s about participating in trends.
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