Six Degrees of Separation

BaldursCat

Six degrees of separation is the theory that everyone and everything is six or fewer steps away, by way of introduction, from any other person in the world, so that a chain of "a friend of a friend" statements can be made to connect any two people in a maximum of six steps. It was originally set out by Frigyes Karinthy in 1929 and popularized by a 1990 play written by John Guare.

I'm watching Harry Potter & The Order of The Phoenix just now & it reminded me that a few years ago I worked out I could do this with the whole cast (I was trying to work out the SDoS to Toby Stephens as it happens but that's beside the point) so, for uh, I dunno, forum bragging rights, what are your best SDoS? Off the top of my head, here are mine...

1) The Entire Harry Potter Cast
Me > My Dad > My Dad's School Friend, who was editor of a UK Sunday paper ? Imelda Staunton, friend of my dad's friend, played Delores Umbridge on my dad's friends advice > entire Harry Potter Cast > JK Rowling

2) Anyone who appeared in the 1st Dr Who Reboot series
Me > My husband > Husbands's former work colleague, cousin of Chris Eccleston > Chris Eccleston

3) Entire Cast of Buffy
Me > My Dad > Dad's School Friend > Sold house to Anthony Head.

Tresset

My church's deacon was once a college roomate with the brother of Joel Hodgson, one of the creators and stars of MST3k! He even said that Joel came to one of his parties once!

My uncle works in Major League Baseball and he got to have his picture taken with former president George W. Bush! (Come to think of it, he has probably met hundreds of famous athletes as well.)

Son_of_Imoen

I'd be much more interested in knowing my Six Degrees of Separation to a Syrian refugee in Jordania, a herder in Mali or a poor farmer in India or a hermit living far remote in the mountains of Tibet. I feel more connected to those and would love to know how it connects me to them.

Coutelier

Son_of_Imoen said:

I'd be much more interested in knowing my Six Degrees of Separation to a Syrian refugee in Jordania, a herder in Mali or a poor farmer in India or a hermit living far remote in the mountains of Tibet. I feel more connected to those and would love to know how it connects me to them.

Usually this is played as a game where you connect two actors, usually Kevin Bacon and someone else. But the whole theory is that you can connect any two people in the world in just about six steps. Even the President of the USA to a villager in Africa... obviously the President goes around meeting lots of other leaders and politicians, and they have staff, friends, relatives who also have staff friends scattered over their own countires. In my case, I have friends who are hindu and whose families are from India, so I could probably connect myself to pretty much anyone there. Or in China where my sister-in-law is from. She also worked in Japan for a while so I've got connections there too. If I go through all the people I know I find I'm pretty well connected all across the world.

This is all the theory anyway. It has never actually been proven. There have been attempts to, but none of them have really been successful. There was one where someone gave out about three hundred parcels that had to be gotten to a random address in the USA, but not using any postal service, just by passing it on to other people you knew. Most of the parcels never arrived and might still be getting passed around for all anyone knows.

BaldursCat

Lovely bit of info there, @Coutelier, I didn't know that. TBH the actor thing is possibly easier to work out than anyone else mostly because of prior knowledge of the end destination & links with other actors. I can actually "do" Russell Crowe in just two moves now but only because of a twist of fate (& the fact that Australia really is a teeny population).

Coutelier

There are 'Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon' sites and apps now, like this one.

It tells me for example that David Warner was in Time After Time, with Mary Steenburgen, who was in End of the Line with Kevin Bacon. Giving David Warner a 'Bacon number' of 2. (Had he been in a movie with Bacon, it would be 1).

But yeah, actors tend to work with and meet a lot of different people making it easier to connect them.

Coutelier

My own ones are my dad used to be social worker back in the sixties would go around checking up on out of work actors to make sure they weren't cheating on benefits. One of those he visited was Michael York. I also met Mel Gibson once, very briefly, as he was drinking in a bar I entered. He seemed quite nice at the time... it was long before he came out as an anti-semite.

Tresset

Tresset said:

My uncle works in Major League Baseball and he got to have his picture taken with former president George W. Bush! (Come to think of it, he has probably met hundreds of famous athletes as well.)

I should have pointed out that my uncle got this picture taken while Bush was still the president. That makes it just a little bit cooler because they don't let just anyone hang out with the president.