服了你个老六fú le nǐ gè lǎo liù

You sneaky one

fú le nǐ gè lǎo liù!服了你个老六！You sneak!

服了你个老六 means roughly “I can’t believe you, you sneak”. 老六, “old six”, is a player who hides and ambushes instead of fighting with the team, and by extension anyone who wins with an unexpected trick.

Took off: 2022
Started in: Shooting games
Today: Now everyday Chinese

What it means

服了你 means “I give up on you” or “you win”, said with a mix of grudge and respect. 老六 is the sixth player. In a five-against-five shooting game, 老六 does not fight beside the team but waits in a dark corner to catch enemies off guard.

In daily life 老六 is anyone who wins by surprise or with a sneaky move: the friend who said they did not study and then topped the test, the teammate who takes the credit at the last minute. 语言文字周报 notes that the word is negative.

How people use it

It is still common, in games and out of them. The short forms 老六 and 你个老六 work alone. Between friends it is teasing; to a stranger it can sound rude.

里昂

刚才那局你去哪了？
gāng cái nà jú nǐ qù nǎ le?
Where were you last round?
我一直蹲在草里
wǒ yì zhí dūn zài cǎo lǐ
I was hiding in the grass the whole time.
最后我一个人拿了三杀
zuì hòu wǒ yí gè rén ná le sān shā
Then I got a triple kill on my own at the end.
原来是你！服了你个老六
yuán lái shì nǐ! fú le nǐ gè lǎo liù
So it was you! You sneaky one, I give up.

More examples

你一直躲在角落里，最后还赢了，服了你个老六！
nǐ yì zhí duǒ zài jiǎo luò lǐ, zuì hòu hái yíng le, fú le nǐ gè lǎo liù!
You hid in the corner the whole time and still won. You sneak!
你说你没复习，结果考了满分？服了你个老六。
nǐ shuō nǐ méi fù xí, jié guǒ kǎo le mǎn fēn? fú le nǐ gè lǎo liù.
You said you didn’t study, and you got full marks? You sneak.

Where it came from

The term comes from Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, according to The China Project. Teams have five players, so a player who leaves the group to ambush enemies is jokingly the sixth man. The gaming site 17173 tells a related story: at a CS:GO Major, a commentator said that a cautious player who stayed back to save his gun was like a sixth man on his team, and viewers began calling him 老六.

服了你个老六 became a stock complaint among gamers and moved into everyday talk. 语言文字周报 put it ninth on its list of the ten most popular internet phrases of 2022.

The original. There is no single image; the term comes from game chat. 17173, a gaming news site, tells the Counter-Strike story. 17173 (in Chinese)