I walked into the grocery shop the other day and saw a soda can labeled “6-7” and “Brainrot.”

I stared at it, confused. My partner took a deep look and explained that these are the biggest words on the internet right now. “Brainrot” is self-explanatory, she said, but “6 7” apparently comes from a viral video of a guy yelling “6 7! 6 7!” referring to someone of that height. So, naturally, it became a thing.

I lingered on it for a while. I’ve seen a lot of videos where people yell stuff. So have you. But why this? Why 6’7”?

Here is why: It isn’t random. It is a specific signal from a generation living through a structural collapse.

The world used to be mainly linear. You could get a job, find a partner, buy a house, make babies, and live happily ever after. You barely needed a mortgage. Elite education was accessible to almost everyone. And most importantly, 10% extra effort correlated with 10% extra pay.

Today, the math is different. Even I, post-MSc in Electrical Engineering, sometimes wonder what it was all for. I watch people who barely graduated get hundreds of millions thrown at them because they have, at worst, “an idea,” or at best, a product that caught a quick tailwind and will eventually go to zero.

I have to credit the USA for at least putting fraudsters like SBF and Elizabeth Holmes in prison. But here in Sweden? You can blow up $15 billion, cause 8 deaths, put $200 million in your pocket, and disappear. It makes me wonder why I didn’t just stick to my childhood room, playing video games and eating Whopper Pepper meals. I loved that. And it was actually pretty cheap.

But I was lucky. I got to experience the tail end of linearity.

Growing up today means navigating total non-linearity. Someone spewing garbage or having sex with “1000 guys in under 24h” can make more money in a week than a doctor or professor makes in a lifetime.

The inflation isn’t just monetary; it’s existential. Especially for men.
Are you under 6 feet? Worthless.
6’2”? Mediocre.
Unless you are 6’7”, don’t even bother.

“6 7” is not what we, the older privileged generations, interpret as a senseless meme. It is a scream. It is a massive protest by Gen Z against a world where nothing matters anymore.

Let me be clear:

In the 1990s, a “middle-class job” was enough to buy a house. Being “6 feet” was enough to be tall.
In the 2020s, the middle has been hollowed out.
To be “wealthy” now requires a crypto

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