Utah’s U.S. Rep. Blake Moore was presiding over the House floor last week when he saw an opportunity to crack a “6-7” joke.
While presiding over the mostly-empty U.S. House of Representatives last week, U.S. Rep. Blake Moore of Utah’s 1st Congressional District saw an opportunity, he said, to embarrass his young sons.
While reporting the “ayes” and “nos” for a vote on a joint resolution, Moore joked the results were “6-7” — referencing a popular, mostly meaningless obsession currently rampant among America’s youth.
At the time, the Utah Republican was serving as the speaker pro tempore, a temporary role in which House members serve to oversee the chamber’s business, including calling for votes and managing debate.
“The question is on passage of the joint resolution. Those in favor say aye. Those opposed say no,” Moore said.
With only a few lawmakers on the floor for the debate, Moore received a weak number of replies from lawmakers who said aloud their vote.
“It’s about 6-7,” Moore said with a small smirk and while doing the juggling hand gesture that’s part of the popular meme.
Moore kept a mostly straight face and went on to determine that “the ayes have it” before Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., made a request to formally hear the votes and laughed at Moore’s joke, causing Moore to smile at the podium.
In CSPAN footage of the floor at the time, two young staffers can be seen laughing and shaking their heads.
In a statement to The Salt Lake Tribune, Moore said the joke was “definitely not planned.”
“It just came to me while sitting in the chair as speaker pro tempore, which can admittedly get a little boring when there’s limited floor activity,” the lawmaker said. “I’d be lying if I didn’t say it was mostly so I could embarrass my kids. I’m away from my boys a lot in this job, and things like this can get their attention and bring us together.”
On the social media platform, Moore, a father of four boys, shared a clip of the moment and said, “My kids tell me I’m ruining it.”
And in his statement to The Tribune, Moore wrote, “They were definitely embarrassed … so mission accomplished.”
The “6-7” meme and its accompanying hand gesture blew up on TikTok and Instagram this year, largely credited to the song “Doot Doot” by the rapper Skrilla, which includes the line, “I know he dyin’ / 6-7 / I just bipped right on the highway (bip, bip).”
But don’t go trying to decode the meaning much further than that: It’s essential meaninglessness — and the obsession adults have with understanding what it means is part of the point.
“There’s not really a meaning behind 6-7. … I would just use it randomly,” one 10-year-old told The New York Times earlier this month.
The meme has gotten so big that Dictionary.com recently named it 2025’s “Word of the Year.”
“Perhaps the most defining feature of 6-7 is that it’s impossible to define,” the website wrote when awarding the phrase its high honor. “It’s meaningless, ubiquitous, and nonsensical. In other words, it has all the hallmarks of brainrot. It’s the logical endpoint of being perpetually online, scrolling endlessly, consuming content fed to users by algorithms trained by other algorithms.”
Moore, at any rate, seems inclined to embrace it.
During a telephone town hall last Thursday, while talking about the recent government shutdown and the fact that, due to the Senate filibuster rules, ending the shutdown required at least 60 votes in favor.
“There’s currently 53 Republican senators and 47 senators that caucus with the Democrats, so there needs to be at least, like, seven [senators],” Moore said before pausing slightly. “I’m not going to say six-seven. I’m going to say seven or eight.”
Source: Utah News