Numeric Dialect
The Numbers of the Internet
6-7. Big W. Took an L. Ratioed. An entire generation is speaking in numbers and scoreboard shorthand — here’s what every one of them means, and why interfaces are now teaching kids to talk.
Why kids are speaking in numbers
One of the strangest recent language stories: a number became a word — Dictionary.com named “67” its 2025 Word of the Year. Not codes, not abbreviations — words, with vibes instead of meanings. Here’s the whole numeric dialect.
6-7 (“six seven”)
The flagship. It means nothing, and that is precisely the point — it’s a rhythm, a hand gesture, an in-joke that adults cannot penetrate. It became so pervasive that teachers traded tips on how to stop it, and some schools banned it during lessons. Enter the 6-7 world →
W and L
A W is a win; an L is a loss. “Big W.” “Took an L.” Straight from sports and gaming scoreboards into everyday speech — you can W a conversation, an outfit, or a Tuesday.
Ratio
Originally a Twitter metric — when replies to a post vastly outnumber its likes, the post has been ratioed, meaning the crowd disagrees loudly. Now a general term for being publicly out-voted or dunked on.
1v1 / AFK / IRL / POV
Gaming and internet shorthand fully absorbed into speech: 1v1 (settle it one-on-one), AFK (away from keyboard — now just ‘not present’), IRL (in real life), POV (point of view — which on TikTok became a whole storytelling format).
The pattern
Notice what these share: they came from scoreboards, chat logs and interfaces. A lot of this slang was inherited from games and apps rather than from speech. When your childhood is a scoreboard, you start scoring real life — which is also exactly what aura points do.
FAQ
Why do kids say 6-7?
Because it means nothing. ‘6-7’ is a rhythmic, absurdist catchphrase with no definition — the joke is that it’s meaningless and that adults can’t decode it.
What does W and L mean in slang?
W means a win and L means a loss, borrowed from gaming and sports scoreboards. ‘Big W’ means a great outcome; ‘took an L’ means a defeat.
What does ratio mean?
Being ‘ratioed’ means replies to your post vastly outnumber its likes — a sign the crowd disagrees. More broadly, it means being publicly out-voted or dunked on.
Why is Gen Alpha slang full of numbers and abbreviations?
Some of it comes from games and the internet — scoreboards (W, L), chat shorthand (AFK, IRL) and platform metrics (ratio). The biggest one, 6-7, came from music: the 2024 drill song “Doot Doot (6 7)” by Skrilla.