Six Degrees of Sepaeration

I've been told that, theoretically, at least, any two people on the face of the earth are only separated by 6 relationships. In other words, the old man down the street (a neighbor--one relationship) served in the European theater in World War II, and befriended a British Royal soldier (friend--two relationships), whose sister (sister--three relationships) was the nanny to (four relationships) a boy who is now the mechanic who regularly works on a car for a man (five relationships) who is part of Prince Charles' staff (six relationships). Theoretically, you know someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows where Osama Bin Laden is hiding (Talk! We'll go easier on you). The idea was first posited by a Hungarian author named Frigyes Karinthy in a short story called "Chains" or "Chain-links" (depending on which translation you are reading) in 1929.

In 1993, Will Smith starred in a movie called, "Six Degrees of Separation" which refers to the theory, but, ultimately, has a lot less to do with it than one might presume from the title. This is generally believed to be what popularized the idea, though. In 1994, two students at Albright College in Pennsylvania created a game called, "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon." From what I understand (and I can't document this) they were somewhat inebriated and watching a talk show, and someone came on talking about the idea of six degrees of separation and in their less-than-100% mental state, they heard, six degrees of Kevin Bacon ('Kevin Bacon' does sort of sound like 'separation'--sort of--but some sort of mental impairment would make it considerably easier to make that connection). In any case, the game is supposed to help illustrate the idea. In the game, one person chooses an actor or actress (or anyone else who has been in a movie) and another person tries to link that person to Kevin Bacon in 6 links or fewer. Usually, this game is played strictly based on being in a movie together, although some will allow other relationships (such as, Clint Eastwood directed Kevin Bacon in Mystic River, but did not appear in the film, or Kyra Sedgwick is married to Kevin Bacon--but she's also done a number of films with him, so that's really kind of moot). Personally, I think the game doesn't really illustrate the point very well, because most of us have fairly static lives: You have the neighborhood where you grew up, the neighborhood you live in now, and maybe you've lived a couple or three other places in your life; you have the people that you work with, and some of them have quit or retired since you've been there, and a few have been hired to replace them, and maybe you've worked a few other places; you probably have one or two places outside of work or home that you know people from (your local Starbucks, for example), but you probably don't get to know too many people in any given year. Kevin Bacon's first movie was "Animal House" in 1978. Since then he has been in 54 movies (and three more are coming soon). That's an average of almost two movies a year, and only one of those movies ever spawned a sequel--and Kevin Bacon's character was killed off in the first movie, so he wasn't in any of the sequels. That's sort of like changing jobs once a year--but only every other year actually having to move (and find a new Starbucks). Who lives like that?

Of course, there have been some variations on the game, such as, Six Degrees of Young Guns, where you pick an actor or actress and then try to tie them, with as few links as possible, two one of the actors or actresses in the movie "Young Guns" (there were an awful lot of prolific actors in "Young Guns," though), or Kosher Six Degrees, where one tries to link two actors or actors without using Kevin Bacon (since bacon isn't Kosher). Kosher Six Degrees is sometimes very frustrating to people who play a lot of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon--especially if you give them two names of people who have both worked with Kevin Bacon, but in different movies (Oh, Steve Martin was in "Novocaine" with... and Oliver Platt was in "Flatliners" with... Oh, wait, um, Steve Martin was in "Novocaine" with Helena Bonham Carter, and, um, she was in "Big Fish" with Billy Crudup, who was in "Sleepers" with Kev--I mean, um, Robert De Niro, who was in "Showtime" with Eddie Murphy, who was in "Dr. Doolittle" with Oliver Platt. [Just for the sake, a better answer would be, Steve Martin was in "Leap of Faith" with Liam Neeson, who was in "Kinsey" with Oliver Platt]). There is also a version which uses only TV shows--but cameo appearances don't count.

By the way, as far as the original concept, it's generally believed that most people will, in the course of their lifetime, get to know about 200 people--some people will get to know more, and some less, but about 200 (this does not include casual relationships). Now, obviously, a lot of those 200 will know each other, but let's suppose that one out of four of the people that each of those 200 people know don't know you, that would mean that, the 200 people that are linked directly to you each know fifty people that you don't know. That would be 10,000 people that are two links from you. 500,000 that are three links from you. 25,000,000 that are four links away; over 2.25 billion that are five links away, and way more than the 6.5 billion that actually inhabit this planet that are 6 links away.