Breaking Down Your Circle of Influence

I remember when we used to play the “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” game, where we would be challenged to connect other stars to the ubiquitous Kevin Bacon (I know, what a shocker) in six moves or less. The less moves the better player you were (or the lamest, considering you would have to remember some of the obscure Bacon movies to do so). I used to brag about being the best, but I would generally use large cast movies when referencing Bacon, not all the indie ones or even the ones where he is the main star. That includes movies like Apollo 13, Sleepers, Mystic River, and A Few Good Men. And if you have someone tough like Queen Latifah, you can even include Beauty Shop. That’s also, incidentally, how you get from Rene Zellweger to Kevin Bacon. Rene was in Chicago with Queen Latifah, who was in Beauty Shop with Kevin Bacon. I know. I’m just THAT good. The game was entertaining when there was nothing else to do, but it also got me to thinking about real life. How many people are in our own personal circles of influence?

We know more people than we think we do. On any given week we are introduced to many people, either through work, through hobbies, through our children/parents, or through common situations (such as meeting at the doctor’s office). In this age of technology that sphere widens even more. Through things like Facebook, we are reconnected with people who we may not have had contact with for a number of years, and in some cases, a number of decades. All of these instances of meeting new people, or reconnecting with old ones, expand our circle of influence exponentially. These are what I call first degree people. They’re the ones who were actually in the movie with Kevin Bacon (i.e. you).

The second degree is much larger than the first, because it includes people who are friends of friends, associates of associates, associates of friends, friends of associates, etc. For example, if your good friend Todd knows Samantha, but you don’t know Samantha, she fits into that second degree. She is one removed from you. In Bacon terms, it would be someone like Phoebe Cates, who was in Fast Times at Ridgemont High with Sean Penn, who was in Mystic River with… you guessed it, Kevin Bacon. I highly doubt Phoebe Cates will ever do a movie with Kevin Bacon, so that’s probably as close as she’ll ever get (I reserve the right to be wrong). That’s also true for those people who populate your second degree. Maybe you’ll all go bowling as a group sometime, but it won’t ever progress to double-dates because they’re “just second degree folk.”

Then there’s the third degree, which is much more ambiguous. I’m going to call them the “friends” of your “friends.” Yes, I’m using the Facebook use of the word. So many of our “friends” are really just associates, people who you have a tentative connection with, but you “friended” them in order to increase your number of “friends,” finding out later that you hardly knew anything about them, as is evidenced by the types of posts, status updates, and shared crap they send you. Either way, you somehow know them, or somehow knew them. Now, think about all the vague connections they made just like you did when choosing “friends,” and tell me that those “fringe” folk qualify as second degree. No way. It’s like Macaulay Culkin. He was in The Good Son with Elijah Wood, who was in Sin City with Mickey Rourke, who was in Diner with Kevin Bacon. There is even less chance of Mac being in a film with Kevin Bacon than there is Phoebe Cates (again, don’t hold me to this).

But here’s what’s funny. When first degree, second degree, and third degree people get together you finally start to see your circle of influence for what it is, a vast connection of people that seems to go on forever. Don’t even get me started on the fourth, fifth, or sixth degrees to your circle. I was reminded of how big the circle is just a couple of weeks ago. I posted a photo on Facebook, it was of my parents very early in their relationship, and before I could blink it had 27 likes and 8 comments. Literally before I could blink. And out of those 27 likes, only 10 of them were from my “friends.” You see, I tagged both of my parents in the photo, so my picture went to them, and to their friends as well. Add to it the people who thought it was a “cool photo,” so they “shared” it with their own circles. It could have made it to China before too long, honestly. That’s the age we live in, and why what we say, how we say it, and who we say it to, even who those people know, is so important now.

You have influence over many people, whether you know it or not, whether they say anything about it or not. I was recently shocked to learn that something I said was highly instrumental in a friend’s major decision process. You never know how what you say affects others, even those you may not know personally, even those in the six degree zone. But it does, so think twice. And try not to get your mother angry for posting that picture of her.

Sam