All Hail 1998 Halloween Furby

It's Brackets (Parentheses) then Exponents then EITHER multiplication OR division depending which comes first in the equation the it's EITHER addition OR subtraction depending which comes first in the equation.

Professional-grade standards for the order of operations have different precedences for implicit multiplication (i.e. 2x) and explicit multiplication (i.e. 2 * x) and some of them would dictate that in that sort of expression, you do the implied multiplication of 2(3) = 6 before you do the division of 12 / 6 = 2, so you do get a different order than you would with PEMDAS, where it’s 12/2 = 6, 6 * 3 = 18.

That said, 2 isn’t really “the correct answer” either just because it uses a more formal or more complex set of precedence rules, people get that wrong too. The thing is, those sets of precedence rules are so rarely known that applying them in any context where you don’t know the other person is trying to use them can be risky, and lead to miscommunication.