Lindsey McMahon (2:57)

But this was inspired by a listener question. Someone sent in a question about it and I had just discovered that this was the word of the year for Dictionary.com.

Aubrey Carter (3:06)

Yep. And I'll go ahead and read the question. This is from our amazing listener, Rory from Singapore. They said, dear Allers English team, can you make an episode regarding this trendy thing? Some of my schoolmates say it often, but what does it mean? Actually, the trendy word is six, seven or six seven.

Lindsey McMahon (3:24)

Just spelled out.

Aubrey Carter (3:27)

You can't say 67, right?

Lindsey McMahon (3:29)

No. And you have to have that sing songy six seven, like it's very. The same song. Wow.

Aubrey Carter (3:36)

This is so foreign to me.

Lindsey McMahon (3:37)

I love it.

Aubrey Carter (3:38)

So, guys, we're gonna dive into this today. Go ahead and make sure you hit the follow button so you don't miss a single episode of our show. We cover words that have been around for centuries and words that just popped up last year.

Narrator/Announcer (3:48)

Right?

Lindsey McMahon (3:49)

Yes. This is so interesting. I'm really excited to dive in. So, yes, Dictionary.com's word of the year is six, seven.

Aubrey Carter (3:56)

Okay.

Lindsey McMahon (3:56)

The numbers. And I remember this being sort of controversial because people were like, those are numbers that can't be the word of the year.

Aubrey Carter (4:03)

I know, right? Illegal.

Lindsey McMahon (4:05)

Yes. Yeah. And I also looked into how they choose the word. So they choose it based on words that made an impact on our conversations online in the. In the real world. And they are looking at searches. They reported that searches of 6, 7 in increased sixfold in June 2025, which I think it was probably people trying to figure out why kids kept saying 6, 7 and what this meant and where it came from.

Aubrey Carter (4:28)

Yeah, yeah. Probably their parents, right?

Lindsey McMahon (4:30)

Uhhuh. But this is interesting vocabulary. What does six fold mean, Lindsay?

Aubrey Carter (4:34)

Six fold means something increases by six times. Right. Y something becomes six times the number of the original number. So 6, 6, 36.

Lindsey McMahon (4:43)

Right? Exactly. Yes.

Aubrey Carter (4:45)

Right.

Lindsey McMahon (4:46)

So six fold. That's a lot for it to increase by that much. And so this. We're going to share how this phrase originated. It was orig. The first instance of it was this song. Do Do 67 by Skrilla is the artist.

Aubrey Carter (4:59)

Okay, interesting.

Lindsey McMahon (5:00)

But it became popular in these video edits that were featuring professional basketball players, especially one, I'm not sure how to pronounce his name, Lamelo ball, who is 67. That's his height. Yeah, 2.01 meters tall. And so this meme. Something happened where. And they would go like this with their hands. I'd say six, seven, like this. And it became this nonsense thing that didn't really mean anything. But then it was described as annoying and like a plague. Because every time anyone said six, seven, kids at first would say six, seven and go like that. Ah. And it was be. It's like this brain rot phenomenon where like digital media that's of poor quality or makes no sense and is just silly kind of takes over the world all of a sudden.

Aubrey Carter (5:48)

Oh, okay. So it's kind of a way that the kids have, they have a response when they see this slop. Right? The AI slop, which we'll talk about in, in a little bit.

Lindsey McMahon (5:57)

Right, okay, exactly. And so this wasn't initially AI like definitely there have been like AI videos since then. But initially not so much. Right. But it, it's interesting how it really is all related. It became so prevalent. Like I would hear it so often. Just saw an article in the Atlantic called. It was it. It was titled something like 67 is dead. Adults killed it. And I loved it because we killed it very intentionally. I had conversations with my friends where we were like, we're intentionally going six, seven. And then the kids are like, no. Ah, cuz that, you know, we were too old to say that.

Aubrey Carter (6:38)

So uncool if your mom saying it.

Lindsey McMahon (6:40)

But so then now it's uncool for kids to say it because the adults took it over. So how long did that trend?

Aubrey Carter (6:46)

I mean, what was the, the shelf life of that trend then? Aubry, when did it start? It was it like January of last year?

Lindsey McMahon (6:53)

So we know that it was in June that it really blew up. Right.

Aubrey Carter (6:56)

Okay.

Lindsey McMahon (6:57)

2025 is when it was like searches increased sixfold. So right before that was not sure when this game came out, but it was like last month, maybe October of 2025 when I started hearing it everywhere.

Aubrey Carter (7:12)

Okay.

Lindsey McMahon (7:13)

My kids were saying it all the time. I, I would hear it at volleyball if the score was 6 7, somebody else would be like 67 every time. And then we would just laugh. It was just like funny but constantly interesting.

Aubrey Carter (7:25)

So it maybe had a shelf life of six months, right? Maybe six months maybe.

Lindsey McMahon (7:29)

And now it's kind of gone. You don't hear it very often. If someone says it, somebody else kind of groans now. So the Atlantic is right. It's dead and adults killed it.

Aubrey Carter (7:38)

Well, that's good to know. That's good to know.

Lindsey McMahon (7:40)

We.

Aubrey Carter (7:40)

I was on a food tour in Rome and there were two young kids that a family had brought, mostly adults. And then a couple of like teenagers and parents were like. Or the other people in the group, the adults were like, what does this mean? And now I realize we were uncool by even asking about that because they were rolling our. Their Eyes at us because we were asking about what it meant.

Lindsey McMahon (7:59)

That's so funny. They're like, that's so six months ago.

Aubrey Carter (8:02)

Six months ago. You're so out of date. Right.

Lindsey McMahon (8:05)

But this is interesting that the other dictionaries chose different words. Right. So Webster's word of the year was slop. You mentioned this, Lindsay. This is interesting. This is digital content that is of low quality. It is produced usually by AI and it's obviously AI usually. And like absurd videos, you know, advertising images that are clearly AI or cheesy fake news. Maybe it looks real and you click on it and then it's just clickbait.

Narrator/Announcer (8:36)

Yeah.

Aubrey Carter (8:36)

And I think even beyond that, you know, just there's. There's a tone that AI currently has. This will probably improve that. When you ask AI a question or where you ask AI to like write you an email or do something for you, it comes up with this bland language. Unless you train your AI really well, it just feels, you know.

Lindsey McMahon (8:56)

Absolutely. I love the word slop to describe it. I'm obsessed. This. It's interesting to. I looked up the original meaning of slop, and in the 1700s it meant soft mud. But in the 1800s it came to mean food waste and would be like, pig slop was food waste that was fed to pigs. And that's when I sort of generally became like rubbish, like garbage or a product that is of low value.

Aubrey Carter (9:21)

Yep. That's what I think of when I hear the word slop. I think of pigs. Like what you would feed a pig or would have back in the day, you know?

Lindsey McMahon (9:27)

Yeah. I still grew up saying that we had neighbors that had pigs and we would go and feed them the slop.

Aubrey Carter (9:32)

Nice. Yeah. So now AI is feeding us the slop. I love it.

Lindsey McMahon (9:36)

So a couple examples of here. You might heard us, might hear it. Her said, my feed is full of AI slop. You might say if you start. If you're on TikTok or Facebook or something and you start just seeing these like, AI generated articles that seem like they're just clickbait. And if you do click on them, it's all ads and. And might even be like blatantly false or clearly false information.

Aubrey Carter (9:59)

Yeah. I just try not to click on any of that stuff. Just stay away.

Lindsey McMahon (10:02)

That's a good recommendation. Every time I've clicked on something like that, I regret it. I'm like, why did I click that?

Aubrey Carter (10:08)

Oh, no.

Lindsey McMahon (10:09)

Better.

Aubrey Carter (10:09)

Yeah, for sure. Or here we go. I almost forwarded an article before realizing. Realizing it was just AI slop thrown together for clicks.

Lindsey McMahon (10:17)

And this happens, right? My mother in law forwarded all of us, the entire family, an article that would have been very newsworthy if it were true, that it was kind of tricky. We're all sort of like, who's gonna tell her?

Aubrey Carter (10:30)

Oh no.

Lindsey McMahon (10:30)

And my husband was just like, oh, it looks like this might not be accurate. It looks like it might be clickbait.

Aubrey Carter (10:37)

Oh my gosh.

Lindsey McMahon (10:38)

Clearly break it to her.

Aubrey Carter (10:39)

Yeah, I think older people are definitely more susceptible to that. But now there are even podcasts that are AI slop. There are podcasts out there that you can find and listen to that are hosted by AI bots, which to me is insane. I mean, that's just my opinion. No, thank you. Not interested.

Lindsey McMahon (10:55)

I'm not interested. And I think even if like an AI voice reading a book, I don't like it. There are too many strange pronunciation things and it just feels disingenuous. I don't like it.

Aubrey Carter (11:06)

Pretty much, yeah. Yep.

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Aubrey Carter (12:45)

Okay then. What was the Oxford Dictionary's word of the year? I'm curious.

Lindsey McMahon (12:50)

Really interesting. It was rage bait. And this is, you know, it's deliberate agitation. But they're so this. The reason this was the word of the year is because there's so much rage bait online comments, articles that are deliberately annoying someone in order to get clicks and views and comments.

Aubrey Carter (13:11)

Deliberately annoying someone or provoking them, really.

Lindsey McMahon (13:15)

Right, exactly. So I guess this was first used online in a posting on usernet in 2002 to designate. It was about driving, about road rage. It was designating drivers being flashed by another one. And they would call that rage bait. And now we use it. I hear it more for online. Like you were saying, deliberately provoking someone.

Aubrey Carter (13:37)

I mean, I think the algorithms are kind of set up this way.

Lindsey McMahon (13:39)

Right.

Aubrey Carter (13:40)

To keep us hooked in and clicking through to those articles and sharing and that kind of thing.

Lindsey McMahon (13:46)

Exactly, yes. And this has created a really interesting ethical debate about what's online and. And should everything be slop and rage bait? Should we try to make it be more uplifting or interesting, Engaging? Right. So this has been interesting to see sort of some of the debates online about how did things get this way and how can we fix it? Is it even possible?

Aubrey Carter (14:10)

Probably in 2026, we'll see people starting to move, trying to move away from technology in some way. But then we're so embedded with technology.

Narrator/Announcer (14:17)

Right.

Aubrey Carter (14:18)

We need it now.

Lindsey McMahon (14:20)

Have you seen these Lindsay ads for apps that are clearly rage bait, where it'll show someone playing the ad but making obviously bad decisions with the goal that you'll download the game to prove you can do better. I've not seen that.

Aubrey Carter (14:33)

Terrible. Creative. Interesting. Interesting.

Lindsey McMahon (14:36)

Creative, but also terrible.

Aubrey Carter (14:37)

They'll do whatever they can do to get your clicks right. Or signups or downloads or whatever it is. So we're smarter than that, I think. Right? Yeah.

Lindsey McMahon (14:45)

Yes. Let's hope we have a couple of examples. You can see how this would look in a sentence. Right. In a conversation, you might say, oh, don't reply to that post. It's obviously rage bait meant to get people arguing in the comments.

Aubrey Carter (14:57)

Yes, I love that one. Or that headline felt like pure rage bait.

Lindsey McMahon (15:02)

Right? Yeah. And that's happened. Right. They're the often news media outlets will know they'll get more clicks, more attention, more comments if they stir up people's emotions and they're happy to aim for negative emotions.

Aubrey Carter (15:14)

I mean, even, you know, because usually how I get my news, I just try to go to specific, like websites. I just go to New York Times. I go the Economist or the Journal or something. But even the New York Times, like they do a little bit of this that try to be a little bit less sensational, of course, because it's a noteworthy publication, but you can tell that they'll a B test titles.

Lindsey McMahon (15:35)

Yeah.

Aubrey Carter (15:36)

Because you could see an article on Saturday morning, then you go back Saturday night, the same article has a different title.

Lindsey McMahon (15:41)

Oh, that's interesting. Makes sense. I guess. And if it's like a new people might think it's a new article and click it again.

Aubrey Carter (15:47)

Sure, yeah. That or they just figured that they were literally testing the click.

Lindsey McMahon (15:52)

This one's doing better. Leave it out there.

Narrator/Announcer (15:54)

Interesting.

Lindsey McMahon (15:55)

Well, we have a little role play here where we can use these three words of the year all in one little conversation.

Aubrey Carter (16:02)

Okay, let's get into it. Aubry. Here we go. Did you see that post about banning coffee before work?

Lindsey McMahon (16:08)

Oh, yeah. I'm pretty sure that's rage bait.

Aubrey Carter (16:10)

You think so?

Lindsey McMahon (16:11)

Yeah, it seemed designed to make people angry and boost clicks.

Aubrey Carter (16:15)

I guess that makes sense. I feel like I saw six or seven slop articles just today.

Lindsey McMahon (16:20)

Six, seven.

Aubrey Carter (16:23)

Did you get the right intonation? We don't know. But it doesn't even matter anymore.

Lindsey McMahon (16:27)

I've heard it a lot. Right. It's just six, seven. I also have heard it's funny today at volleyball, I heard early this morning they said 6:12 and then kind of like a play on where they were like 6:12.

Aubrey Carter (16:41)

Interesting.

Lindsey McMahon (16:42)

And because they still had that sing songy and that was kind of clever because it's like.

Aubrey Carter (16:46)

Yeah, but do you think that the, you know, the Gen X generation, the parents of Gen Z, can they ever invent a phrase or is it just the young. The youngins, the young people that can actually invent a phrase?

Lindsey McMahon (16:58)

I think we could maybe. It probably wouldn't get picked up as easily or as quickly. And we wouldn't. Because we have better things to do with our time.

Aubrey Carter (17:07)

We do. Rather than stand around and figure out a right coded language. Yeah.

Lindsey McMahon (17:11)

There's a reason adults aren't doing this.

Aubrey Carter (17:13)

That's true.

Lindsey McMahon (17:14)

That's true.

Aubrey Carter (17:15)

I just think we can't do it because we're not cool enough. Right.

Lindsey McMahon (17:17)

Like true.

Aubrey Carter (17:18)

Yeah, there's a cool factor.

Lindsey McMahon (17:20)

There aren't enough other adults that would be into it. They're all too busy too.

Aubrey Carter (17:24)

Oh, so funny. So where did we use our key phrases here? So. So you said. I said, did you see that post? Panning coffee before work? And that would create some rage in me for sure.

Lindsey McMahon (17:34)

Right. I would maybe click that. It's like a new law.

Aubrey Carter (17:38)

Be really hindering on your personal liberties here. Right, right. And then you said. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's just rage bait.

Lindsey McMahon (17:45)

Right, exactly. Meaning it is designed to make people angry, to get them to click and comment.

Aubrey Carter (17:52)

And then what else?

Lindsey McMahon (17:53)

Then you said, I guess that makes sense. I feel like I saw six or seven slop articles and that would mean like AI generated articles that are either not true or just, you know, intentionally there for clicks or comments. And then I said, six, seven.

Aubrey Carter (18:09)

Yeah, you got the intonation right. I have. Not even close. So good.

Lindsey McMahon (18:12)

I intentionally didn't make you ever have to say it. I'll have me be the one to say it.

Aubrey Carter (18:17)

I'll catch on to the next trend. I'll get on early, I'm sure.

Lindsey McMahon (18:20)

Yeah, you don't need to do this one. It's gone. It's done. People are just gonna roll their eyes at you if you say six, seven, like that.

Aubrey Carter (18:25)

Now I know why those kids were rolling their eyes on the food tour. Now I get it.

Lindsey McMahon (18:28)

So funny. I love it. We should have record for your food tour and saved you.

Aubrey Carter (18:33)

I really should have. Really should have. All right, Aubrey, what's our takeaway for today? I mean, there. There are always new trendy words coming up. Where should we leave our listeners?

Lindsey McMahon (18:40)

Absolutely. These are all fun, interesting words, but I think the biggest takeaway is about the discourse surrounding slop online rage bait. You know, how the Internet is changing and what, if anything, we should do about it. I think it's definitely really good advice to not click those articles. Like to be able to start recognizing rage bait or AI generated articles and not looking at them. Right. Don't just get your news on Facebook. It's tricky, though.

Aubrey Carter (19:11)

But and just having conversations broadly about where, like, what are we consuming now? It's changed a lot. Even in the last year, between January 25 and 24 and 23, it's like, oh, my gosh, things have changed so much. And so where are we headed? Right. This is a good connection topic to share with a native speaker.

Lindsey McMahon (19:29)

Absolutely. It would make for really interesting conversations. I've been having these conversations and it's interesting.

Aubrey Carter (19:35)

Yeah, yeah. Really good stuff. All right, Aubrey, we'll see you back on the show very soon. Thanks for being on the mic with me today.

Lindsey McMahon (19:40)

Awesome. See you next time.

Aubrey Carter (19:41)

Take care. Bye. Thanks for listening to all ears. English. Would you like to know your English level? Take our 2 minute quiz, go to allearsenglish.com and if you believe in connection, not perfection, then hit subscribe now to make sure you don't miss anything. See you next time.

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