CONTACT
Six degrees get even closer
How the separation theory applies to the gay and lesbian community
By Matt Hirschfeld mhirschfeld@kansan.com
The Facebook group "Gay Six Degrees of Separation" plays off the six degrees of separation theory, which refers to the idea that every person in the world is connected to everyone else by a chain of no more than six people. This means that the people you know are connected to you by one degree, the people they know by two degrees, and so on. So, in theory, fewer than six people separate you from anyone, whether it be Brad Pitt or President Bush.
The six degrees theory is both an academic area of interest and a pop culture phenomenon. The popular trivia game "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" challenges players to try to connect any actor to Kevin Bacon through his or her film roles.
Joe Kapp, a financial advisor in Washington,D.C., and financial columnist for The Advocate, has concluded, however, that the gay and lesbian community is connected by far fewer than six degrees.
When Kapp became president of Potomac Executive Network, the gay and lesbian chamber of commerce in D.C., he wanted everyone in the organization to be connected with each other, which led to the
Is this for real?
A 2007 study by Microsoft called "Planetary-Scale Views on a Large Instant-Messaging Network" concluded that everyone in a given country is connected by an average of 6.6 degrees.The study used records of 30 billion electronic conversations from 240 million people around the world.Below are the countries with the fewest degrees of separation between citizens.
Turkey 5.17972 degrees
Brazil 5.59779 degrees
UK 5.63122 degrees
Spain 5.71882 degrees
Mexico 5.72241 degrees
France 6.02962 degrees
China 6.38154 degrees
USA 6.95803 degrees
development of a strong close-knit community that extended beyond business interactions.
His ideas caused him to start the Facebook group "Gay Six Degrees of Separation" as an experiment to test what he discovered in the business world through Potomac Executive Network. He says the goal of the experiment is to get to one million members. The group currently has almost 50,000 members.
"If you look at the group, [high school] seniors to senior citizens are posting. It's like a melting pot of the gay community," Kapp says.
Ashlynn Horras, Knoxville, Iowa, junior, says she feels the same way about the lesbian community. Horras says the TV show The L Word explored a similar idea to that of the Facebook group by introducing the
idea of "The Chart," which was a graph one of the characters used to map out the affairs between the gay and lesbian community around her.
"It's a much smaller dating pool, that's for sure," Horras says.
Since the Facebook group's start in March 2008, an average of 7,500 members have joined each month, and Kapp says it's the biggest gay and lesbian group on Facebook without an agenda, such as promoting dating or marriage of same-sex couples. Kapp says the group is just a place for people to have conversations.
Steven Karlin, Overland Park senior, has found that being gay has made his social world smaller and more close-knit than those of many straight people he knows.
"I know that whenever Person A is talking about Person B, they'll always turn
to me and say, 'Oh, he's gay. You must know him,'" Karlin says of his experiences with gay and lesbian people at the University. "And I've found that 90 percent of the time, even if I don't know him personally, I've heard the name or seen him at a party."
Recently, one of Karlin's roommates had a friend over, and the friend mentioned her new gay roommate. Karlin says she turned to him and said,"You're gay! You probably know him, right?" And as it turned out, Karlin did. He says he met him at a party his freshmen year and they have a couple mutual friends.
Eileen Kessler, CEO and founder of OmniStudio, Inc., a communications design firm, says she has noticed a change in the gay business community in that it has become more exclusive in the past 10 years because more gay and lesbian people have been coming out. Gay and lesbian-oriented businesses and organizations usually prefer
to do business with each other; Kessler says.
"It's usually easier for gay people to get together with other gay people because there are no hesitations about socializing with them," Kessler says.
Andy Brown,2008 graduate,says common experiences and qualities, especially those concerning sexuality such as being gay and lesbian, tend to bring people together. The majority of Brown's friends are gay, and he says being gay can cause a stronger bond than most other common bonds.
Brown says he and his gay friends seek out ways to spend their free time that usually involve their sexuality in some way.
"Straight people try to find places where anyone can go, like trendy bars or a football game to go to," Brown says. "Gay people look for the gay hangouts. It's their own culture, not just something in common."
photos by Alex Bonham-Carter, graphic by Becka Cremer
October 9,2008
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