Jasper Johnson explains the origin of the viral '6-7' meme

If you’re a social media savant who loves to keep up with the latest trends, you’ve likely been introduced to the “6-7” meme over the last several months.

Even if you’re off social media entirely, there’s still a good chance you’ve heard it mentioned at least once. It feels like kids of all ages are required to say it once a day when out in public unaccompanied by an adult. It’s even been picked up by national sports broadcasters. For those unfamiliar, the meme is as simple as someone mimicking juggling something with their hands while saying “6-7”.

If you’re looking for a deeper meaning behind it, stop now — there is rarely a rhyme or reason to these viral trends. It’s just a fun bit that the younger generations use to incidentally make the older generations feel old. But the meme does have a significant connection to the Kentucky men’s basketball team. It was freshman guard Jasper Johnson who came up with it first (along with help from his former Overtime Elite teammate and fellow Bluegrass native, Tay Kinney) all the way back in December 2024.

“It started when I was in Atlanta,” Johnson explained to KSR following a Morgan & Morgan commercial shoot in downtown Lexington. “We were at the airport actually, about to go to the Bahamas, I think, to play a game. We were trying to get some food, but there was not too many options, it was early in the morning, not too many things were open. We had went to Starbucks but I had never had Starbucks prior to that.

“I was sitting with TK (Tay Kinney), he had got this drink, I was like, ‘I’ll just get the same thing that you got.’ And he was like, ‘All right, bet.’ So I was drinking it, he was like, ‘You like it, Jas?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, it’s like a six, seven.’ And he was like, ‘Ohhh yeahhh, we gotta do it into the camera! I feel like it’s gonna go crazy!’ So we did it, got our media person to record it for us. We said six-seven, and it started blowing up from there.”

Kinney was right. Just like that, a new Internet trend was born. And it’s only continued to get bigger across social media in recent months.

(Scroll to the second video in the Instagram post below to see the original video.)

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The actual “6-7” part of the meme originated from an unofficially released song that Johnson and Kinney were familiar with at the time. It was titled Doot Doot (6 7) by Skrilla, which includes the artist repeating the phrase “6-7”. The song wasn’t all that popular at the time, though — until Johnson and Kinney’s quick 10-second video exploded.

“I never thought it would get that big, just saying two numbers,” Johnson said. “It’s definitely crazy.”

Trent Noah, one of Johnson’s new Kentucky teammates, said that he had to have Johnson explain the meme to him when they arrived on campus back in the summer. Another Wildcat, Reece Potter, always thought it was Kinney who came up with the meme, but he was glad to learn it was his teammate.

“I didn’t know Jasper was actually the one who created it,” Potter added. “I always like to make fun of him. It’s kinda funny that he was the one who kinda started it.”

And that, my dear reader, is a 30-year-old sports writer’s attempt at getting to the bottom of a meme that is beyond his age bracket.