Teachers returning to school this month can't draw smiley faces in class now, because they make the kids erupt in laughter – all because of a new meme called "Verity."
Phillip Lindsay, a teacher in Arizona who goes by Mr. Lindsay on TikTok, recently shared a video, now with over 8 million views, joking about his middle school students' incessant references to "Verity" – which they shout whenever they see a smiley face.
Another TikToker, @chudmike, joked in a viral video: "Imagine being the elementary school teacher whose first year it is, and she decides to have a yellow smiley face design in her classroom after all the kids all summer just watched YouTube and learned who Verity was."
@chudmike genuine misery #school #verity
♬ original sound - chudmike
Times are changing. Last year,
a teacher or parent would accidentally say "6-7" and unknowingly push the humor button. Smiley faces are the new trigger for Gen Alpha. Some older folks are struggling to understand why.
What is the 'Verity' meme?
Verity is a yellow smiley face character who was created in May by a YouTuber named ThatMob, one of many creators who make short horror films set in the video game "Minecraft."
In his full "Verity" movie, uploaded on July 12, ThatMob's character stumbles upon a cardboard box that contains Verity, a yellow smiley-face virtual helper meant to give him tips on how to survive in the game – something akin to Clippy, Microsoft's animated paper-clip assistant from the '90s and 2000s.
Verity ultimately transforms into a tall, lanky monster chasing ThatMob in the dark. The video now sits at over 23 million views.
A different YouTuber, Horror Skunx, took this imagination to the next level when he shared a music video for his song, "It's me, It's Verity," in July. In the video, he's seen opening a Verity box on his front stoop, and then being haunted by the smiley creature while they both sing.
The video currently has over 25 million views, and the song has become the main background track for Verity memes online. Its main TikTok audio has over 279,800 posts using it as of writing. Most of them joke about seeing smiley faces in public, like one user who encountered Verity on a truck bed. Another person got jumpscared by a billboard. Mr. Lindsay, the middle school teacher, has experienced his kids singing the song firsthand.
@mr_lindsay_sped They’re back and so are the memes! #lapeace #guccimorty #verity #genalphaslang #genalpha
♬ original sound - Mr. Lindsay
'Verity' could be the new '6-7'
Verity seems similar not only to 6-7 (a rap song lyric that became a vocal tic parroted by children globally) but also the likes of Harambe (the late Cincinnati gorilla who became an ironic martyr in 2016) – it has become a mini joke echo chamber, in which the joke is that you're in on the joke.
One TikToker, @ajyaps69_, claimed, "The Verity meme has changed my perspective on smiley faces and yellow balls for the rest of my life, because tell me why I'm walking around the gym yesterday and I go to the locker room, and there's a yellow ball rolling around the gym; my first initial thought is, you guessed it, 'Oh, look, hey, it's Verity.'"
His video with over 27,000 likes has top comments looking for smiley faces in his video. One, with over 5,000 likes, includes a cropped screenshot of his nostrils and mouth, captioned, "Hidden Verity."
@ajyaps69_ #verity #asmr #meme #falsity #yap
♬ Chthonic Symphony - Akira Yamaoka
The Verity meme is mutating in unexpected ways. For some, when they hear any word that ends in "-ity," they hear the name Verity or joke that the word is a "Verity variant."
"When a girl asks if I still have my virginity but I haven't heard of that Verity variant yet," reads the caption of one viral TikTok video with over 185,000 likes.
One girl, whose name is Verity, even shared her account of the meme's real-life impact. "Never found my name on keychains growing up, and now this," reads her viral video, which has amassed over 2.9 million likes.
@lucinebruh now everyone calls it verity, its annoying #verity #smileyface #funny #imso #jolly
♬ original sound - OFFscrambledEGG
It starts with kids loving corporate horror
The appeal of Verity stems in part from the smiley face's sinister connotation, set up by ThatMob's original YouTube video. It uses the common horror trope of turning cute figures into scary villains – think Chucky the doll, the animatronics at a kids' restaurant in "Five Nights at Freddy's" or Huggy Wuggy, the terrifying plush doll with jagged teeth from a video game that took over toy stores in 2023.
Verity also follows a "corporate" horror trope popular among today's youth. For instance, in 2019, an image of a pale-yellow office interior was shared on 4chan; the post inspired the "Backrooms" urban legend, which just got its own A24 film in May. In both, a corporate entity operates an endless maze of rooms existing in another realm of existence.
"Skibidi Toilet," another children's horror media obsession from 2023, has a similarly corporate flair. The animated series shows an army of men in business suits with cameras for heads, fighting toilet monsters that say "Skibidi."
Verity's name appears with a trademark symbol (™) at the start of the original ThatMob YouTube video. Plus, the smiley face is a clear AI chatbot archetype, so perhaps its horror appeal says something about the way kids view ChatGPT: as a possibly valuable study tool but also as an end to humanity itself.
Adults have their own version: The Shoggoth, a monster who's used as a metaphor for AI in tech circles – it hides behind a smiley face.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Why the word 'Verity' and yellow smiley faces could become the new '6-7'
