If you’ve spent some time around a member of Generation Alpha lately, you’ve likely heard them use some pretty strange-sounding slang.
Generation Alpha, consisting of those born from the year 2010 through today, stands out from other generations for the way that being born into a world where social media is a given part of daily life has affected the trends they follow and the things they say.
You may have heard the middle schoolers in your life tossing around terms like “skibidi,” “6-7,” “rizz,” and more. But what do they all mean?
Due to growing up steeped in social media and meme culture, Gen Alpha has developed an instinct to absorb even the most obscure online references and make them part of their daily terminology. This is the key to understanding Gen Alpha slang.
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Let’s break down some popular Gen Alpha terms circulating recently.
Perhaps the most pervasive of all right now is “6-7” or “67” (pronounced “six seven”). As with many of Gen Alpha’s slang terms, it has devolved into being a fairly nonsensical phrase to yell out at just about any given time, often disrupting the classroom or whatever setting they’re currently in.
But, the term does have an origin story. As Mr. Lindsay, a teacher and TikTok content creator known for his videos decoding Gen Alpha slang he hears in his classroom, explained in a video, the term initially came from a rap song called “Doot Doot” by Skrilla.
In the song, the phrase “6-7” is repeated over and over again. The song began to be used frequently in edits of basketball clips on TikTok, which led to its virality. Many of these edits were of NBA star LaMelo Ball, who is 6’7″ tall.
After the basketball edits spread across TikTok, members of Gen Alpha began repeating the phrase “6-7” in the same cadence that Skrilla does in the song. Now, the repetition of the phrase has become so widespread and disruptive that some teachers are beginning to ban it from their classrooms.
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“I’ve been teaching for 20 years and I’ve dealt with all sorts of slang — nothing has driven me crazier than this one,” Adria Laplander, a sixth-grade language arts teacher in Michigan, shared in an interview with TODAY.com.
Laplander recently posted a TikTok of her explaining to the kids in her class that the phrase would no longer be allowed in her classroom.
“We are not saying the words, ‘67’ anymore — if you do, you have to write a 67-word essay about […] what the word ‘67’ means,” she explained in the video. “If you do it again, another 67-word essay. After five times, if you’re still saying, ‘67’ in this classroom, your essay is going to bop up to 670 words.”
While it may be leading middle school teachers to their breaking point, “6-7” is simply the latest in a long line of odd internet-fueled slang from this age group.
Last school year it seemed teachers everywhere were being plagued by the term “skibidi,” a similarly nonsensical phrase middle schoolers could be heard yelling out during class. Unsurprisingly, the term originates from social media content.
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According to Merriam-Webster, “‘Skibidi’ is a gibberish word spread by Skibidi Toilet, a popular YouTube show featuring human-headed toilets battling camera-headed humans. It is widely used as a nonsensical (and occasionally pejorative) expression and meme online.”
Around the same time, the slightly-more-logical term “rizz” was also circulating amongst Gen Alpha. Short for “charisma,” the term “rizz” is generally used to refer to someone being charming, smooth, or attractive.
This then evolved into referring to a person who has “rizz” as “the rizzler,” which made way for the child social media star officially known as “The Rizzler.”
The young boy, named Christian Joseph in real life, went viral after his dad posted a video to TikTok of him saying “this is the face of a rizzler” followed by the boy making a face squinting his eyes, pursing his lips, and stroking his chin.
He then skyrocketed to TikTok fame, and currently has around 1.7 million followers on his account, where he and his family continue to post silly, meme-fueled content.
What Gen Alpha will come up with next is anyone’s guess, but it seems a safe bet that it will pop up in their social media feeds and spread from there.
