Internet meme · Classic
Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon
A parlor game and trivia concept about linking actors to Kevin Bacon through co-starring connections, based on the idea that any actor is within six steps of Bacon.
- First seen
- Last seen
- Uses cited
- 3
- Revision
- 1
Where it started
Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon or Bacon's Law is a parlor game where players challenge each other to choose an actor whom they connect to another actor via a film in which both actors appeared: this is repeated to try to find the shortest path that leads to prolific American actor Kevin Bacon. It rests on the assumption that anyone involved in the Hollywood film industry can be linked through their film roles to Bacon within six steps. The game's name is a reference to "six degrees of separation", a concept that posits that any two people on Earth are six or fewer acquaintance links apart. In 2007, Bacon started a charitable organization called SixDegrees.org. In 2020, Bacon started a podcast called The Last Degree of Kevin Bacon.
The use timeline
A trivia/parlor game based around linking an actor to Kevin Bacon through a chain of co-starring actors in films, television, and other productions, with the hypothesis that no actor was more than six connections away from Bacon. It is similar to the theory of six degrees of separation or the Erdős number in mathematics. The game was created in 1994, just at the start of the wider spread of Internet use, populated further with the creation of movie database sites like IMDb, and since has become a board game and contributed towards the field of network science.
Wikidata Q117054: Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon — parlour game.
Examples
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