Actor Kevin Bacon is using his infamous “six degrees” fame to encourage people to stay home and keep themselves apart from crowds to help fight the spread of the coronavirus.
The premise of six degrees of separation is that we are all linked by six or fewer people. The “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” game — which connected the actor to other actors through movies they had been in — also expanded to say that everyone is only six connections or acquaintance away from another person.
“Hi folks. You know me, right? I’m technically only six degrees away from you,” the actor says with a smile in a video on his Instagram feed.
Then he talks about his idea to help people stay safe.
“Right now like people around the world, I’m staying home because it saves lives and is the only way we are going to slow down the spread of this coronavirus,” he says.
His plan is to get people to post to social media with the hashtag #IStayHomeFor and tag the person they are staying home for and trying to keep safe. Bacon tags his wife Kyra Sedgwick.
In the post Bacon is asking people to ask six people to do the same.
“We’re all connected by various degrees (Trust me, I know!)” he writes in the post and tags celebrities Jimmy Fallon, Elton John, Brandi Carlile, Kevin Hart, Demi Lovato and David Beckham.
He finished the post with “Let’s use this 6 Degree thing to do some good!”
The post has been liked over 66,000 times and people are posting photos with the hastag.
