Is “Six Seven” Really Brain Rot?

You’re reading Open Questions , Joshua Rothman’s weekly column exploring what it means to be human.

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, which the rapper Skrilla may have been referencing in his song “Doot Doot (6 7),” which came out last December. 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 te