What 6-7 Has in Common with 23, 42, and 867-5309
From “23 Skidoo” to “6-7”: Why Kids Have Always Loved “Funny” Numbers
It’s not hard to imagine the scenario: young people across the country are shouting a seemingly random number at each other and laughing. Adults, confused by the phenomenon, see it as evidence of the decadence of youth culture. Reporters, meanwhile, write articles discussing the phenomenon trying to discern the meaning behind the new number craze.
No, I am not talking about 2025 and the numbers 6-7. Rather, the year is 1899 and young people everywhere are shouting “23” at each other and laughing while adults are puzzled by the strange behavior.
One of the most surprising (and annoying) trends of 2025 was the explosion of kids saying 6-7 and laughing, to the befuddlement of parents and teachers. This is certainly not the first time this has happened, however. Youth obsession with certain numbers goes way back. In this article, we’ll review the history of other “funny” numbers throughout the years.
“Funny” Numbers
Human beings have always been fascinated with numbers. As representations of the quantifiable aspects of reality, people have always recognized the power and logic inherent in numerical reasoning. Understanding numbers and what they represent offers us tremendous power over the world—they can even get us to the moon or process the vast amounts of data necessary to power the digital ecosystem we all live in today.
It is no surprise, therefore, that humans have always attributed value to numbers far beyond their numeric meaning. In pre-modern times, certain numbers were believed to hold special symbolic values: seven as perfection, three as a symbol of eternity, four for the elements, six harmony, and so on. Within Christianity, numerology was shaped by Christian theology: twelve representing fullness, three the Trinity, two the natures of Christ, forty a time of trial or temptation, and so on. For pre-modern people, a number was never just a quantitative expression; it was a symbolic statement about the nature of reality.
In modern times, we see this same tendency in how youth culture often latches on to certain numbers to express something symbolic, comedic, or subcultural. Let’s look at other numbers in the past that have taken on meanings beyond their face value.
23
Around 1899, young people began saying the number 23 to denote leaving quickly (e.g., “Let’s 23” meant “Let’s get out of here”). Shortly after, the word “skidoo” was added, so the phrase became “23 skidoo.” While many explanations of the phrase have been offered—including references to Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities and New York’s Flatiron Building—its origin remains unknown. At first, adults were exasperated by the phrase; in March 1899, the Morning Herald newspaper published an article explaining the phrase so its older readers could understand:
“For some time past there has been going the rounds of the men about town the slang phrase “Twenty-three.” The meaning attached to it is to “move on,” “get out,” “good-bye, glad you are gone,” “your move” and so on. To the initiated it is used with effect in a jocular manner.” (Morning Herald, March 17, 1899)
But by 1906, “23 skidoo” had entered the national vocabulary and was used in corporate advertisements. It even found its way onto the Titanic, where door 23 was known as the “skidoo door.” The phrase made its way into plays, literature, and television, and was fairly universal by the 1940s. It seems to have died out after World War II but underwent a brief renaissance in the 1970s due to the so-called “23 enigma,” popularized by William S. Burroughs and Robert Anton Wilson.
42
The number 42 was popularized by Douglas Adams’ 1978 Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a radio play and book by the same name. In the story, a supercomputer is designed to answer “the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything,” and it reports that the answer is 42—the joke being that the answer is useless because we don’t understand the question. This number became a reference among fans of the series and entered wider use, especially within the sci-fi subculture of the 1980s, where it was a common joke to respond to any question with the answer “42,” which would inevitably confuse anyone unfamiliar with the book. Popular science fiction series have all paid homage to the joke, including X-Files, Dr. Who, Lost, and Star Trek.
420
One of the consequences of the cultural revolution of the 1960s is the proliferation of drug-related phrases that entered common parlance. One of these was the number 420, which eventually became a euphemism for marijuana and cannabis culture as a whole. The origin of the phrase is quite interesting, dating back to San Rafael High School in San Rafael, California, in 1971, where a club of five high school students calling themselves the Waldos was searching the grounds around town for a supposed abandoned cannabis farm. They would meet at a statue outside the high school at 4:20 PM each day; the code word for their plan became “4:20,” which eventually morphed into shorthand for consuming marijuana.
By the early 1990s, the phrase had spread into the mainstream. However, the origins were obscured (one common story was that 420 was a code used by police officers designating a marijuana-related call, which was an urban legend). The San Rafael story was not widely known until 1998, by which time 4:20 had become a universally recognized term referring to cannabis culture, and so it remains to this day.
1337
The number 1337, also known as “Leet-speak,” is a form of textual obfuscation using an alternative orthography (various character substitutions and phonetic shifts) to “spell” words, first popularized in the old seven-segment displays of pre-digital calculators. For example, if you type the numbers 71077345 on an old calculator and turn the display upside down, it reads SHELLOIL; or 318830 to spell DEBBIE, or even 451713 317718 for BILLIEEILISH. You can also substitute other symbols for letters as well, for example, h3ll0 for hello, or using the number 4 to denote the word “for.” Leet-speak was very popular among the young computer hacker generation of the 1980s, who were known as “leets,” which was short for “elites,” referring to those who had elite-level knowledge of computer programming. The number 1337 is spelled “LEET” on a calculator; young, edgy programmers were known as “1337s”.
867-5309
In 1982, the band Tommy Tutone achieved success with their one-hit wonder song “867-5309/Jenny,” in which the chorus repeats the phone number of the song’s fictional character, Jenny. 867-5309 instantly became the most recognizable number in the country, while life quickly became a nightmare for anyone unlucky enough to actually have that phone number. One Chicago woman complained that she was pranked incessantly, and upon selling her number to a radio station, the station reported 22,000 prank calls over a four-day period. Others reported hundreds of prank calls a day.
Over time, most people with the number were compelled to abandon it (though a few businesses retain it because it is easy to remember). The hype has not died down since the 80s. A radio DJ who had the number reported as late as the mid-2000s, he was still receiving 30 calls a day from pranksters asking for Jenny. Today, most English-language phone companies refuse to even issue 867-5309 as a number to save their customers from being terrorized by unwanted prank calls.
6-7
This brings us, of course, to 6-7, the funny number of 2025. The phrase originated in the 2024 rap song Doot Dot (6-7) by Skrilla. Even in the context of the song, its meaning is ambiguous, with Skrilla himself stating that the phrase had no particular meaning. It soon became popular as background music in TikTok and Instagram reels featuring basketball player LaMelo Ball, who is 6’7″ tall. Eventually the phrase exploded beyond the sports world, to the point that any occurence of the numbers 6,7 became a joke (e.g., getting 67% on an exam, a math problem where the answer is 67, a congressman representing the 67th district, etc.) Despite having no particular meaning whatsoever, the phrase has become so disruptive that many schools have banned its use entirely.
Pockets of Irrational Delight
In the end, the recurring saga of “funny numbers”—from the cryptic urgency of “23 skidoo” to the absurd profundity of 42 and now the meaningless mania surrounding 6-7—reveals something timeless about human nature: in an increasingly ordered and data-driven world, we crave pockets of irrational delight, especially during youth when identity is forged through shared secret and subversive play. These numerological fads can thus be viewed as brief rebellions against seriousness, often exemplifying the humor or interests of youth subcultures. If history is any indicator, we can undoubtedly expect more “funny” numbers to crop up in the future.
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