Six Degrees of Adolf Hitler
A fun new craze sweeping the internets, Six Degrees of Adolf Hitler is the name given to a game played by utilizing a wiki's internal links. One plays by starting at a random page, then attempting to navigate his/her way to the wiki's article on Adolf Hitler with nothing more than links to other articles. It's a pretty fun time-waster when you're online if you have nothing better to do and a love of Nazis.
Rules
The name originates from the idea of Six Degrees of Separation, that one crackpot theory developed by some stoned Hungarian woman back in the late '20s that states any two people on Earth can be connected via six or less intermediaries. Basically, the idea is that you can trace any person to another person via social networking.
Online, this theory has taken on new life in the form of a sort of game played on wikis. The general goal is to make your way to the page on Hitler in six or less steps. The step-by-step breakdown:
- Random article
- Make your way to Hitler in 6 steps or less
- ???
- PROFIT!
Example: 
Paternal Gift Farm, Maryland -> Maryland-> United States -> World War II -> Adolf Hitler
Sieg heil! Congratulations, in just four links, you've successfully linked Hitler to some random-ass home development in Maryland about which nobody gives two shits. Presumably, the only way to truly win is to actually land on the Hitler page when clicking the random page button.
Of course, you don't have to use Hitler as your destination of choice; any topic will do. Hitler's just naturally the most common. Nor do you have to start with a random page - say you'd like to show that two articles are related by fewer than 7 links; you can start with one of those. But why would anyone want to use anything other than Hitler?
Other Amusing Articles Towards Which To Play
Where to Play
Obviously, the most popular playing field is the English Wikipedia, due to its size and scope of containing such a vast quantity of useless bullshit. As such, the game is also well known as Six Degrees of Wikipedia. Actually, it's probably known better as "Six Degrees of Wikipedia," since people usually try to avoid mentioning Hitler in polite conversation.
But for more of a challenge, you can play on wikis that have fewer articles and less internal links, thus making it harder to reach Hitler in six clicks. For an even bigger challenge, go to a foreign Wikipedia that's written in a language you don't even understand!
Or for easy mode, you can play right here on Encyclopedia Dramatica. However, this is ill-advised, since even the most unrelated ED articles are very likely to contain healthy amounts of praise for the Holocaust and a dozen or so Jewish jokes. When playing on ED, it would be best to go for a different end goal.
Variations
Or, rather than simply trying to make it in 6 steps or under, you can race others on the web to the destination, the winner being the one who gets there in the least links. Just start a thread in your favorite web community, and race the other forumgoers to the agreed-upon goal. This particular variation is known as Wikiracing.
There is also a similar version of this game played IRL that predates the Hitler version called Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. The goal of this trivia game is to connect any actor with Kevin Bacon, the linking element being the films in which two actors have both starred. This game apparently started after Kevin Bacon once claimed that he had worked with everyone in Hollywood. However, this version fails because it requires the players to know a bunch of shit about film history - and because Kevin Bacon is a fag. But srsly, it is was actually a real thing. No, really, here's the site. (dead link)
See Also
External Links
- Article on "Six Degrees of Wikipedia"
- Wikipedia's own page on the subject - though they only play towards articles that are boring and gay, due to being boring and gay themselves
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