Six degrees?

[poolofmire]

"I answered in true six degrees of seperation style". Someone used that and I'm not very sure of what it means. Is is that the previous is relevant or irrelevant? What are the six degrees of separation.
Thank you for replying :)

[buggles]

If I understand the phrase correctly, I think it refers to the idea that there are only six degees or levels of separation between any two people on the planet.
The theory works like this - if I know say 100 people and each of them knows 100 people and each of them............., and so on, by the time that's happened 6 times, that other person and I are linked by a chain of acquaintances

[David L.]

Yes...but how does one "answer", respond in a conversation, in a "true six degress of separation style"?
I've seen the film twice and thoroughly enjoyed it when I realized what it was really about on the second viewing; but I'm as stumped as poolofmire.

Which leads me to ask, what do other people think that movie is really about??

[buggles]

Originally Posted by David L.

Yes...but how does one "answer", respond in a conversation, in a "true six degress of separation style"?
I've seen the film twice and thoroughly enjoyed it when I realized what it was really about on the second viewing; but I'm as stumped as poolofmire.

Which leads me to ask, what do other people think that movie is really about??

I think we'd need the full context of where Poolofmire came across the quote to have any chance of explaining it.

[poolofmire]

Hi there, thanks for replying. Well this was during a chat, the guy was telling me about a conversation he had with someone. Now he's a journalist raised and educated in the UK, so I supposed that this was a common idiom. But I don't get what it really means.

This is the context:

"well, she was asking me a load of questions about my views on feminism, and I finally said it was feeling like the Spanish Inquisition. And then I said that Torquemada, the chief inquisitor, wouldn't have tolerated me for very long and from there, in true six degrees of separation style, I went to the last Inca king, Tupac Amaru, who was drawn and quartered by the Spanish in 1781.... and then to the MRTA, the revolutionary group named after him in Peru in the 1980s"

[buggles]

Sorry, I think I have to give up here, not having seen the film.
It certainly seems like the sort of statement that only makes real sense within the context of the movie.

[Batfink]

Right, firstly the six degrees of separation relates to how Marconi (look it up) foresaw that if you set up 6 telegraph centres around the world then it would be possible for instant communication anywhere instantly, how right he was.*

This was later coined and used by the playwright John Guare. Which resulted in the film. So anyone on the planet is related in someone else, by six stages. So I could link myself to President Bush in six stages. I would link myself to a friend in Washington, then he might know someone in the White House, who knows someone who makes the coffee to the President. Well that was three stages...

There is the Kevin Bacon Game in America, where you must link any two actors in 6 stages. That is each link is made by the fact that they have starred in a film with each other. I wouldn't be good at that since most of the American films to me are like the hamburgers you get in the fast food places: good for a few minutes, but you get hungry for more pretty quickly.

Finally, the film reference above is similar. The speaker can link him or herself to the other person in six stages.

The great poet Allen Ginsberg I remember, said he could link himself to the father of American poetry Walt Whitman in six stages. Allen Ginsberg made love to this person, who made love to this person, who made love... who made love to Walt Whitman! 6 stages!

* Marconi's father-in-law was Irish and helped him pay for this research into the telegraph!!!

The Irish are everywhere! Happy Paddy's Day!

[poolofmire]

Well, as I've gathered from what I know and from your posts, six degrees of separation style must mean that two things are related even tough they don't seem to be. And that closes the matter for me :)