6-7 is the biggest viral trend of the year, and a lot of adults are still mystified when young people online go crazy to see it. Everywhere you look, there is an excited crowd of kids waiting for the viral trend to play itself out in real life. While that might annoy some older observers, the youths have a powerful ally: Wanda Maximoff herself.
Elizabeth Olsen joined Seth Meyers to talk about her latest project, A24’s Eternity. The romantic comedy has the actress thinking about life a lot. And, even the Scarlet Witch can admit when she doesn’t have the handle on the pop culture zeitgeist right now. But, she’s down with the 6-7 movement.
“I don’t really know what’s going on in culture,” Olsen admitted. “But, I do know about 6-7. I’m really into 6-7.”
“So, I think the reason they love it is because it’s absurd and random. And, how great,” the WandaVision star continued. “Like, I think we’re really doing a lot of things that are, I don’t know, maybe cynical or pointing at something, and there’s something really funny to me about the abstraction and absurdity of just getting excited about two numbers that are in order.”
What is 6-7?
Interestingly enough, Olsen’s estimation is basically spot-on. 6-7 might as well be placeholder text. 6-7 is basically whatever you need it to be at that moment. That kind of meaning overload makes it perfect for the frustratingly strange times we live in. Kids are effectively using 6-7 as a gateway for the more heavy absurdism that begins to creep in as we age. (No pressure everyone!) So, if you’re looking for one concrete definition, you’re going to be searching for a while.
If you find that kind of explanation unfulfilling, Complex Magazine might have a more full bodied experience for you. Two months ago, they sat down with Skrilla, a 25-year-old rapper from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His song, “Doot Doot (6 7)” is credited as ground zero for the current youth craze. It’s easy to see how, in an age of viral audio and increasingly difficult to pin down trends, all of that got lost in the shuffle.
But, in his interview with Complex, Skrilla left the meaning of the meme phrase up to interpretation. Once something is this far out of containment, any attempt to bring it back down to earth probably wouldn’t work anymore anyway. “Everybody else got their own different meaning,” Skrilla said. “But for me, it’s just ‘negative to positive.’ It helped me turn from a negative person to a positive person.”
Now, with South Park trying to spoof it, and late night shows doing their best to explain this absurdity. Maybe, 6-7 makes a little bit more sense to you now too. Or, as the millennial Scripture goes, “Nothing matters, eat at arby’s.”
(Photo Credit: Getty Images, NBC)
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