69

About

69 is a number used to refer to a sex position due to the number looking like two people having mutual oral sex.

Origin

Sometime during the 1790’s, people had started practicing this position.^[1] Soon after the position became known, the term soixante-neuf (French for sixty-nine, hence the number) was given to it. The earliest known use appeared in Whore’s Catechisms in France. The Kama Sutra refers to the position as “The Congress of a Crow.”

Spread

The term began appearing in American pop culture in the mid-late 20th century. Notably, two pop songs in particular use the number to refer to the sex position. The first, “She Blew My Mind (69 Times),” was composed by R&B singer Rick James in 1982.^[2] The chorus of the song goes “She blew my mind 69 times,” a reference to “blowing” being slang for oral sex and the number being a reference to the position (shown below, left). The other, more controversially, is Bryan Adams’ “Summer of ’69,” composed in 1984 (shown below, right). While his co-writer, Jim Vallance, denies rumors that the song is a reference to the sex position, Adams explicitly states it is about the sex position in an interview cited by Uproxx.^[3]

I think [“Summer of ’69” is] timeless because it’s about making love in the summertime. There is a slight misconception it’s about a year, but it’s not. “69” has nothing to do about a year, it has to do with a sexual position…At the end of the song, the lyric says that it’s me and my baby in a 69. You’d have to be pretty thick in the ears if you couldn’t get that lyric.

On December 8th, 2003, Urban Dictionary user starflier^[4] uploaded the popularly understood definition of the number, gaining over 20,600 upvotes in fourteen years.

Nice

Online, it is a popular practice to reply to every post with the number in it, regardless of context, with “nice.” In June of 2017, The Daily Dot^[5] published an extensive history of the practice. According to the research, the words “69” and “nice” began to be commonly associated together in the summer of 2008 (examples shown below).

The Daily Dot notes that the practice of saying “Nice” after 69 likely originates from an episode of South Park called “Miss Teacher Bangs a Boy” in which the cops respond to claims that a female teacher is having sex with a male toddler with, “Nice.”

Popular early examples of “69” being associated with “Nice” came in 2009 with regards to sporting events. For example, during a football game, commentator Al Michaels mentioned how Vikings defender Jared Allen was harassing quarterback Kurt Warner by saying “Sooner or later, #69 will be in your face.” Twitter user Playstub replied to the quote with “Nice” (shown below).

In the following years, it would become practice to mass-reply to any tweet with the number in it, regardless of context, with nice. For example, when Barack Obama tweeted that 69% of Americans wanted hearings for his Supreme Court nominee pick Merrick Garland on May 13th, 2016,^[6] the primary response was “nice” (shown below).