The Inner Monologue

Language is a sloppy miracle. It does not arrive fully formed from the sky; it bubbles up from playgrounds and song hooks and late-night Discord calls, shaped not by grammarians but by bored teenagers weaponizing silliness. Once in a while, one of those silly sparks catches, burns, and becomes permanent. Most vanish. And hovering right now in that strange, liminal air between absurdity and immortality is a simple, nonsensical pairing: 67.

To some, it is nothing more than the current internet rattle-toy—a nonsense call-and-response chanted in school hallways and TikTok comments, the vocal equivalent of doodling in the margins of culture. But to treat it only as noise is to misunderstand how language evolves. Every generation invents its own linguistic handshake. The question isn’t whether “67” means anything now; the question is whether it could one day mean something real—something functional, something human—beyond “we saw the same meme.”

History is full of doubters who were wrong. People once dismissed “OK” as a goofy fad—an inside joke in 1839 newspapers, the 19th-century equivalent of kids shouting “Skibidi” in the lunchroom. It was initially a misspelled abbreviation (“oll korrect,” itself a joke about bad spelling). No one believed it would survive. Yet it did—not because it was profound, but because it was useful. OK eventually filled a gap in communication: a compact acknowledgment, a neutral confirmation, a universal shrug. From telegram operators to text messages, it did a job no other word did as efficiently.

And that is the key: words survive not because they are clever, but because they are necessary.

Compare that to “woop-dee-doo.” That sarcastic flourish never became utilitarian—yet it endured anyway. It did not evolve into a functional glue like “OK”; it settled into a tonal niche. It gave cynicism a sound. It lasted because we always need ways to puncture pretense, to roll our eyes in syllables. Sarcasm, like oxygen, never goes out of style.

So where does “67” fit? Nowhere durable—yet. It is pure memetic entropy: meaning pulled out from under itself, humor built on shared confusion. It isn’t a code; it’s a signal. To say “67” today is to wink at the internet, to announce your membership in a moment. Its value is social, not semantic. It exists to say, “I get it too.”

That is not trivial. Belonging is one of language’s oldest functions. But belonging alone rarely immortalizes vocabulary. Generational shibboleths burn hot, fast, and fade—like “yeet,” “bruh,” “bussin,” “skibidi,” “damn, Daniel,” and countless other linguistic fossils that will someday populate BuzzFeed nostalgia countdowns and academic papers on digital youth culture.

The truth is simple: 67 is an inside joke masquerading as speech. And inside jokes have a brutal half-life. They are funny until they are not. Then they calcify, become cringe, become relics of a particular September in a particular cultural season.

Will “67” survive? Unlikely. Not because it is foolish but because it is functionless. For a term to enter the permanent lexicon, it must either do a job language hasn’t already covered or express a feeling we cannot otherwise articulate. “OK” carved out linguistic territory. “Woop-dee-doo” protected a tone. “67” merely announces participation in a vibe.

Unless it undergoes the rarest of memetic evolutions—acquiring emotional payload, practical usage, or ironic longevity—it will slip into the attic of forgotten slang. It won’t die entirely; nothing on the internet truly does. It will live as a cultural timestamp, a future trivia question, a nostalgic giggle between thirty-year-olds who one day catch each other’s eyes and whisper “67” with the same embarrassed affection people reserve for old AIM usernames and middle school haircuts.

But it will not become the next “OK.” Not because it can’t—but because it doesn’t need to. The world already has the word “nonsense.” It already has winks and shrugs and gestures of belonging. “67” fills no void.

Its purpose is not permanence. Its purpose is now—a brief flare of joyful stupidity in a world often too serious. And there is beauty in that. Not every spark needs to become a star. Some shine long enough to remind us that language is alive, that culture is playful, that young people will always find new ways to annoy adults and bond with each other in the process.

One day, another set of syllables or numbers will replace it. And somewhere, an older person will ask, bewildered, “Why are they saying that?” That confusion is not a linguistic failure. It is the engine of renewal.

Language is a rebellion that never ends.

And for a moment—just a moment—67 is leading the charge.