“Thank God it's Friday.” “It's hot outside.” – How are you? “Can you believe this rain?” Malinowski characterized such utterances as forms of “phatic” communication. This somewhat awkward term, adopted by generations of researchers, comes from a Greek verb meaning “to speak out loud.” Phatic communication is like the verbal equivalent of primate grooming: it is a way for humans to provide and experience connection and companionship. We are so accustomed to thinking in terms of written language, which almost always means something, that the idea of meaningless language can seem like an oxymoron. But when we are dealing with what Malinowski calls “winged words passed from person to person,” it is often the case that “the concept of meaning as contained in the statement is false and useless.” If you answer the seller’s question “How are you?” When you talk seriously about your mood that day, you make the mistake of attributing meaning to a meaningless fragment of phatic communication. It's like thinking that because the barista smiles at you, it means she's interested.
Can meaninglessness itself be a message? In recent intelligence “six seven” in Timestyle reporter Callie Holtermann argues that the phrase can be seen as “a kind of gleeful obfuscation, an attempt to become the unknowable generation that has been on constant display almost since birth.” The writer tells Holtermann that “six seven” is meant to “upset the old people”—it's a way of saying, “Let's exist in our own space.” These ideas sound plausible, but may be too focused on adult problems. When a busload of elementary school students shouts “six seven!” between the sixth and seventh stops are they really trying to tell the bus driver something? “All people have a well-known tendency to get together, to be together, to enjoy each other’s company,” writes Malinowski. Childhood and adolescence are socially difficult. Perhaps children like “six-seven” because it’s easier to be together.
We can consciously choose what to do, or we can react to the situation we find ourselves in; we can immerse ourselves in this atmosphere, feeling the social energy. This second way of being may be more fundamental than we think. “We need to view people as temporary streams laden with situations,” sociologist Randall Collins suggested in 2004. What we do depends on what others do. It is for this reason, he wrote, that the sociological perspective places emphasis “not on individuals and their interactions, but on interactions and their individuals; not on individuals and their passions, but on passions and their personalities.”
What does “six seven” look like from this point of view? IN “Ritual chains of interaction(Don't judge a book by its title!), Collins lays out a holistic theory of human nature based on ritual, into which “six seven” fits nicely. Ritual, Collins explains, “is a mechanism of mutually focused emotion and attention that momentarily creates a shared reality.” There are important rituals, like communion, and small ones, like shaking hands, or walking, or standing at the front of a conference room and clearing your throat. These activities, which often include a physical component, help bring gatherings of people together. Rituals are “everywhere,” Collins writes, because social life is ultimately “a series of situations” that must be started, carried out, and completed.
Rituals not only give structure to our days, Collins argues; they also create the “emotional energy” we crave. We want to feel alive, valued, connected, energized. On Sundays in church we experience something special when we all pray together; we have “feelings of confidence, enthusiasm, and a desire to take action.” We can't stay in church forever, but its rituals link our emotions to “cognitive symbols” that we can later use to spread good cheer. The church ends; you're going home; normal life resumes. But later you see a spire above the treetops and feel a surge of energy coming from your fellow humans and God. “What unites society?” Collins asks. The answer: “groups of people gathered in specific places who feel solidarity with each other”—and who then find ways to maintain that solidarity across space and time, using symbols and rituals that help them feel it even when they are not together.
The Internet has changed society greatly, but it has not changed it completely. We are still the same old people, with the same old ways of communicating with each other. Six Seven wouldn't exist without marketing, virality, and brain rot, but it can't be reduced to those things. Earlier this week, my wife and I took Peter to an after-school program at a nearby arboretum. Along with several other children he didn't know, he was forced to wander haphazardly through the cold ground, collecting leaves to use in some unknown craft project. The children shuffled and wandered, tired at the end of a long day. Then the organizer pointed to a tree, which, oddly enough, bore forty types of fruit – this was the work living botanical magic created by grafting by artist Sam Van Aken. “Fourty-one“- exclaimed Peter. (That's six times seven minus one.) The other children laughed and their eyes met. For a while their energy returned. ♦
