The Facebook Version of the Five Degrees Game

Wow, this small world stuff is a lot easier in Facebook . . . they do all the work for you. But it still kind of weirds me out and excites me. In Facebook, there's a section where they suggest "people you may know" and based on some kind of information you have in common, people will end up in this list. I used to just go in and delete hundreds of people I never heard of, but now I check them to try to figure out what on earth Facebook thought we had in common. Usually, it's just anyone who works or attends school or graduated from one of the seven campuses of the University of Maine system. Some times, I can tell by looking at the "mutual friends" that the person is a relative of someone I know or went to school with people I know but not to the same school that I attended. And then there's always the comments... you're looking at a post from one friend and you see a comment from another friend and think, "How on earth do you two know each other?"

Sometimes a friend of mine shows up as a mutual friend and I contact them to ask, "How do you know so-and-so." There's usually a fun story. But some times, the mutual friends have nothing in common except me from what I can tell. So I've started trying to solve the mystery of how we're all connected. Here are some of the results:

 

Two of my friends are Facebook friends with each other but there's nothing in my past that puts these two together:

• CM and KS were in my very first 3rd grade class that I taught and they both show up as a mutual friend for KC, a woman that I taught school with. I knew KC came to my school after those students had graduated so I was pretty sure she hadn't been their teacher. It turns out, they went to middle school and high school together. I could've been KC's 4th grade teacher!
• I look at the profile page for a friend from my college alumnae group in Dallas and CM is on her friend's list. (CM is even more connected than I am, BTW.) I have to hear this story. Turns out, my college friend is CM's best friend's step mom.
• 2022, Jan 4: We Go Way Back 
• 2022, July 9: I commented on G&JK's post and CBP replies, "How do y'all know each other?" So it turns out that CBP and I were in Girl Scouts in high school and got to know each other through her mom; then she helped me with my first troop; then with my second troop, she helped me with my service unit's wide games and I ended up helping her council with their leader training weekend. GK and I were leaders together in the same service unit and met through the wide games. JK and CBP's brother TB were best friends all through junior high and high school.
  

I have two friends who are both friends of a person I don't know and I'm pretty sure my two friends don't know each other:

• RC (a friend in Maine) and H? (a former student at UMF) are both mutual friends of S?. They don't know each other but H? went to high school with S? and RC worked with S? on some work-related projects.
• SB (a Hollins buddy from undergraduate days) and KB (a colleague I met through a doctoral exchange program that UNT had with UVa) both live in Richmond but don't know each other. BUT they both know me and they both know Vicki who is the mother of one of SB's daughter's friends and who is a school librarian and professional colleague of KB's.

A FB friend of mine has a FB friend that I'm not FB friends with but that I know outside of FB:

• Someone named PH makes a comment on a post by CL, who is a former 4th grade student of mine, now in the real estate business. My best friend in elementary school was PH--we lost touch after 8th grade. It's probably not that uncommon of a name, but it's still kind of weird. I click on PH's profile and her "about" information reveals that she graduated HHS the same year I graduated from PHS. And though I know she went to a private high school after elementary school, she lived in HHS district and could've easily transferred there. I contact CL who explains that PH was his mentor in the real estate business when he first started. I then message PH and sure enough, it's my long-lost elementary school buddy.

Someone I know points out that a stranger-to-me and I have or should have a connection:

• 2021, July 8: The Double Whammy: JS introduces me to RB.
• 2009, January: JS (Yes, the same JS in the Double Whammy story) found out that a colleague of hers at WGU, GB, graduated from UMF! GB explained the connection to UMF goes deep: "Did you know that my youngest daughter was BORN in Farmington? AND that I'm a graduate of UMF? AND that I lived up in that area for 10 years AND that I was the District Technology Coordinator for MSAD #52? I'll bet we know some mutual folks--how cool is that? I also used to work at UMF -- I worked for the bursars office at one point, then worked for the Northern New England Network for Cooperative Learning, and Maine Administrators of Special Ed"
  

NOTE:  I keep the "published on" date on this post as March 15, 2008 because that's the day I joined Facebook