Kevin Bacon has always maintained six degrees of separation in the cinematic universe. (Class of 2017, #48)

Sometimes Messrs. McBride and Nief use a term in a way that signals that they really don’t know what it means. For example, “six degrees of separation.”

The idea of “six degrees of separation” is that two people can be connected through a chain of mutual acquaintances, with no more than six steps between them.

(Stanley Milgram’s small world experiment is said to be one of the sources of this claim. When I was in grad school, we were told that the “six degrees” were the result of a thought experiment: Every community in the U.S. has a number of community leaders who know many members of the community and their representative in Congress. Everyone is known by one of these leaders. Presuming all members of Congress know one another, then there are five degrees between me and anyone else in the country. Maybe the President fits in there too to make it six; I can’t remember the details.)

The game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” was created by three Albright College students in 1994 (or a year before the Class of 2017 was born), purportedly after watching Footloose and The Air Up There back-to-back. The game involves connecting an actor (or other movie personnel) to Kevin Bacon through links of people working on films together.

The clue that Messrs. McBride and Nief don’t understand this is that they claim that “Kevin Bacon has always maintained six degrees of separation.” In English “maintain separation” means to keep away or be disconnected from something, which is the opposite of the concept of “six degrees,” which is about connection.

It goes without saying that “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” isn’t a part of any generation’s mindset.