If you’re anything like me, you’ve seen (and maybe indulged in) more than a few “67” jokes across TikTok and Instagram. What does it mean? Who really knows. Why is it funny? Another mystery. Yet, somehow the internet collectively decided that this random pair of digits is comedic gold.
And yes, I laugh at the 67 jokes every single time. My friends even associate me with the number at this point.
But the meme’s origins are as chaotic as the joke itself. In 2024, American rapper Skrilla released a song titled “Doot Doot (6 7).” Try explaining that song title to a medieval child or honestly, anyone offline. They would look at you like you had 6-7 heads (I had to slip that in there. Sorry).
But TikTok users quickly connected the “67” to NBA player LaMelo Ball’s 6-foot-7 height, and suddenly, the meme took off. Edits, remixes, exaggerated hand gestures and mimicked expressions from the “67 kid” flooded the internet. Within days, people weren’t just referencing the number, they were reenacting the meme with the signature motions and attitude, as if the number itself came with a built-in choreography.
At its root, “67” is this generation’s version of the iconic “21” Vine. But here’s the difference: the “21” meme actually had meaning. It came from a little boy being asked, “What’s 9 + 10?” and confidently answering “21.” And yeah, looking back, it may seem a little dumb, but at least it had a setup, a punchline and a moment behind it. There was context. There was a reason it was funny. “67,” on the other hand, genuinely has no meaning. It’s just a number that we’ve all collectively decided is hilarious for absolutely no reason.
This leads to the defining difference between these two examples: Memes today don’t grow through communities; they explode through algorithms. The “21” era and the Vine era overall thrived on jokes that spread organically. You either stumbled upon it firsthand or heard it from someone who did — and that small-scale discovery was what made it feel uniquely funny.
But modern meme culture operates at hyper-speed. A sound, a clip or a number can rack up millions of views in hours. The minute a meme hits the algorithm, it becomes everyone’s joke instantly, universally and sometimes exhaustingly. And the more widespread it becomes, the more the original humor dissolves.
Yes, the 67 meme is still funny; I fully admit it makes me laugh. But its rise shows how the internet’s shift toward mass visibility changes the lifecycle of humor. What once felt spontaneous and communal now feels manufactured, optimized and pushed into virality whether we asked for it or not.
And this shift doesn’t just affect teens and adults, it’s shaping kids’ first experiences with humor and culture. Five-year-olds with iPads are encountering the same memes as adults, swiping through TikTok long before they can read. Their sense of humor is being shaped not by playground jokes or cartoons but by whatever TikTok decides is trending that week. Their earliest understanding of comedy is algorithmic.
And the effects are already showing. Kids can’t even get through math class without laughing whenever the number 67 appears on the board. They don’t know why it’s funny — they just know the internet said it is. They’ve memorized the facial expressions. They’ve learned the hand motions. They recreate the “67 kid’s” gestures like it’s a reflex. Viral humor becomes something to imitate, not something to understand.
But the part that honestly unnerves me the most is how deeply this stuff is sinking into the generation of iPad kids. These are children who can’t read full sentences yet but can confidently shout “67!” like it’s the funniest thing in the world. The mimicked gestures, the tone and exaggerated reactions all pulled straight from TikTok. It’s almost like the meme becomes their entire personality for a week, and they don’t even know why.
When memes seep down to kids this young, it stops feeling like a joke and starts feeling like noise. It’s loud, constant and everywhere. And the wider a meme spreads, the less funny it becomes. There’s something about watching a trend shift from a niche inside joke to a full-blown online spectacle that drains the humor out of it. By the time it reaches elementary school classrooms and shows up in math lessons, it feels less like a meme and more like a cultural echo, repeated because the internet won’t let it die.
Maybe that’s the real tension with modern meme culture: the faster and farther a joke spreads, the quicker it loses the spark that made it funny in the first place.