Question

My professor says that through social media we should be able to make contact and speak with anybody on the planet. He says everybody knows somebody that knows somebody that knows somebody. He said that we should be able to reach out to a person by knowing less than 5 people in the chain. How would I go about meeting a person like Lebron James? What would the process look like? I am trying to see if he is correct or just talking... Thank you!

Answer 1

It may need not be the case always. In order to go about meeting someone like Lebron James, one needs to either have a strong and wider network of friends on social media, or be at least connected to someone who has such a wide connection. Further, there may be innumerable profiles on the social media, bearing the same name; some fake, some genuine but not the one that you may be looking for while some simply not matching your criteria of search. In addition, the security features on social media sites these days, further prevent us on blindly searching for a person especially a celebrity. The friends list could be possibly lock and so would be the posts that are open for the Public to read. In such a case, it is very difficult to even ascertain the number of friends of Lebron James, to be more specific or to even check how many of the social network users follow him or like or react to any of the posts that is shared by Lebron James privately. Therefore, even if one has connections, it may take a while to reach him and in most cases, it may simply lead to a dead-end. Take for example, a person from China may have a lot of friends on his list but none from America. Even friends of friends chain may not lead to that continent if the networking is highly limited. Hence, it is a general assumption and not a fact that this process may fetch any practical results.