67 Made It to South Park: What Happened
When South Park put six seven in an episode, the meme officially entered the adult world. What the show did with it, and what it did to the show.
· 2 min read · by the 67 team
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South Park has been the internet's cultural coroner for decades: when the show covers a trend, the trend is usually pronounced dead within a season. 67 survived.
What the episode did
Without spoiling anything for the three people who have not seen it: the kids do the gesture, the adults do not understand it, and the school's attempts to stop it escalate in the way South Park escalations do. The joke is not the number. The joke is the adults.
That is the correct reading of the meme, and the show got it in one.
Why it did not kill 67
Normally the South Park treatment is a sign that a meme has become mainstream enough to mock. For most trends that is the end. But 67 was already built on adults not getting it, so an episode about adults not getting it was not a parody. It was a documentary. Teenagers watched it and did the hands at the screen.
The reverse effect
The episode did something unusual: it brought the meme to people who had never heard it. Parents who watched the show with their teenagers finally had a reference point. A few of them started doing the gesture at home, badly, which is the single most effective way to make a kid stop. Several families reported peace.
Where 67 sits in the South Park hall of fame
The show has covered every internet wave since the internet had waves. 67 is the first one that is a number and the first with no meaning to satirise. That forced the writers to satirise the reaction instead, which may be why the episode aged well: reactions do not change, only the numbers do.
Our take
We are not affiliated with South Park, obviously. But if a cartoon that has ended a hundred trends could not end this one, we feel reasonably safe building a game about it.
