Taylen Kinney is just about to get his college basketball career underway.
He’s a talented guard set to play a huge role this season for the Kansas Jayhawks despite being just a freshman. Eventually, his future might include the NBA.
Kinney, though, is actually incredibly famous — even if people don’t realize he’s the origin of one of the last year’s most viral trends.
A little more than a year ago, the phrase ‘6-7’ started popping up all over social media, including in meme-level TikTok videos.
It was one of those things that everyone was doing but no one quite understood.
Well, Kinney is the one who started it.
How Taylen Kinney Started ‘6-7’
Thanks to The Athletic’s Lindsay Schnell in a story written in September 2025, the world has all the details it could want about Kinney starting the trend that took over TikTok and much of the rest of social media.
“It’s just two numbers, ain’t much to say,” Kinney told Schnell. “It doesn’t really mean nothing.”
The meaning is almost less important than the fact that the meme took off like wildfire anyway.
Kinney, who at the time played in the prep basketball league run by Overtime Elite, originally said “six, seven” in a video posted by the league in which he was asked to rank his Starbucks drink. He made a hand motion suggesting he couldn’t quite decide between six or seven.
After that, Kinney kept working “6-7” into whatever videos he was featured in, and it started to blow up.
Schnell wrote this:
“The Athletic has surmised that ‘6-7’ means … nothing. For some, it’s a way to convey indifference, or whatever makes sense to the user. At its core, it’s a song lyric that social media turned into a meme. And like any and everything involving the internet, it’s evolving at a rapid rate. Understanding the cultural zeitgeist is secondary to being part of it: Fifteen-time NBA All-Star Shaquille O’Neal, the father of a 22-year-old, acknowledged he didn’t get it either. But sure, he’d be in a video mimicking it.”
These days, ‘6-7’ has managed to persist even as it gets quite tiring for some.
And yeah, it’s quite the coincidence that it was started by a stud basketball recruit. It also overshadows how good Kinney is.
Taylen Kinney Recruiting
Kinney’s final-six in his recruitment included Kansas as well as Louisville, Kentucky, Oregon, Arkansas and Indiana.
He was ranked as a top-15 recruit in the country.
Kansas will likely rely on him at times to be a point guard, and he’ll also get good mentorship from the returned Melvin Council, who was granted additional eligibility in a court ruling.
Kinney only stands 6-foot-3 — not 6-7 — but has immense upside for the Jayhawks and beyond.
Kansas Freshman Taylen Kinney Started ‘6-7’ Meme