67, clip farming, and the panopticon

Last month, Dictionary.com chose “67” as its word of the year, and I’m not surprised in the slightest.

The “Word of the Year” is primarily a marketing stunt, and Dictionary.com knows that it will go more viral if it chooses a “brainrot” word. Every dictionary is currently playing this game: the Oxford University Press previously chose “rizz” and the laughing-crying emoji for the same reason. They’re ragebaiting people into arguing about whether these are actually words, but secretly tricking you into buying their dictionaries (or, more realistically, visiting their dictionary websites).

This is all fine and well—I’d rather get manipulated by Big Lexicography than someone else—but I don’t think even Dictionary.com recognizes the irony of what it just did.

If you’ve been living under a rock, “67” is the latest meme gripping Gen Alpha culture. The joke began with the song “Doot Doot (6 7)” by Skrilla, which was initially used in TikTok edits of the popular NBA player LaMelo Ball. Eventually, other basketball players discovered that they could get turned into viral edits if they said the numbers “six seven” in interviews, and then Gen Alpha kids also started saying it on camera in hopes of going viral.

Importantly, the meme depends on the implicit presence of the algorithm. The NBA players and Gen Alpha kids aren’t saying “67” for the interviewer or a live audience. Rather, there’s an underlying knowledge that the phrase will get “clipped” and turned into a meme on social media.

It’s kind of like how, in the 1960s and 70s, advertisers and politicians began optimizing their real-life speeches for television “sound bites.” The understanding was that this other, invisible medium was more important than the present one. Distribution mattered more than product.

Now we’ve abstracted another layer. Most politicians have yet to catch up, but “clips” are the new sound bites. People will say things in person, to get it captured on film, to get it turned into an algorithmically friendly snippet later on.

This has been happening for a while now, but “67” is the logical endpoint. The meme satirizes how memes are made by turning “clipping” into a nonsensical act. The number doesn’t have to be said on camera anymore; in fact, it draws absurdity from the fact that it’s not said on camera. The absence of the “clip” creates a humorous dissonance that still points back to clip farming as the butt of the joke. When we say “67,” we are ironically performing for the algorithm.

Aidan Walker has already brilliantly outlined how the popularity of “skibidi” was a cultural reaction to our hypermediated reality. I think “67” takes that idea a step further by highlighting our own complicity in the constant churn of online content. It is uttered with a knowing wink: someone could record this and then it could be turned into a TikTok meme, and I could go viral.

Indeed, now that the joke has breached containment, it’s no longer as funny in the original basketball edits. The context has to feel increasingly counterintuitive: a dictionary officially recognizing the word, a Connecticut lawmaker saying it on the House floor, a reference in a Broadway musical. When the moment is inevitably captured on film, it feeds the beast—drawing attention to the person who says it, but also pushing “67” further in the engagement treadmill.

I’m also guilty of this. I’ve gotten over a million views for talking about the number, and I just appeared in this CBS Evening News segment explaining the phenomenon:

Halfway through the interview, I had the strange realization that neither the host nor I were actually talking to each other, but to another, online audience. CBS was doing this interview because they wanted to go viral. I was doing this interview because I wanted to go viral. And Dictionary.com picked the word because they wanted to go viral.

At the end of the day, we’re all clip farming, and “67” is the ridiculous, self-referential culmination of it all.