73 The B0Aty Number

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73, also called The B0aty Number, is an Old School RuneScape community in-joke born from a 2015 PvP death match where streamer Skill Specs killed rival B0aty with a single 73-damage hit right after B0aty bragged it could not happen. The number stuck around as shorthand for cosmic bad luck and killer timing inside the OSRS scene.

Overview

73, sometimes called The B0aty Number, is an Old School RuneScape community running joke about the exact damage number Skill Specs hit on fellow streamer B0aty during a 2015 Twitch PvP death match1. B0aty had just told chat that his opponent could not possibly deal enough damage to finish him. One tick later, a 73 flashed above his head and he was dead1.

The gag is basically the number itself. OSRS players drop 73 in chat, in Reddit thread titles, in clip captions, and in reply memes whenever someone eats a wildly unlucky hit or when the digits 73 show up in unrelated stats, price checks, or gambling flips2. It is less a template than a shibboleth, an inside marker that flags you as part of the 2007scape crowd4.

How It Spread

Once the YouTube upload was out, the number attached itself to B0aty inside the r/2007scape subreddit, where players kept posting screenshots of 73-damage hits and Grand Exchange prices ending in 73 as a running callback to the fight2. Skill Specs was folded in as a secondary character in the bit, but the number was almost always tagged to B0aty4.

The joke jumped off Reddit and onto Twitter too. On February 28th, 2017, user @YoungJilker posted a Big Man Tyrone edit chuckling over the number, and that tweet pulled in more than 12,000 views3. A later Twitter clip of the moment kept circulating in OSRS reply chains under the same 73 caption5.

The fight also seeded a small genre of fan edits inside the RuneScape scene, from supercuts of 73s appearing in unrelated gameplay to remixes of Skill Specs' laugh over the B0aty audio4. The bit stayed niche outside OSRS but is a durable in-joke among Twitch and Twitter accounts that follow the game2.

How to Use This Meme

Typical use is dead simple: reply with just "73" whenever someone in an OSRS context takes an absurdly unlucky hit, calls their shot right before losing, or when the number 73 shows up organically in a stat, price, or drop2. Common conventions include captioning clips of high-damage PvP kills with the number, editing a 73 splat over unrelated footage, or quoting B0aty's pre-death bravado before showing the outcome4.

Frequently Asked Questions