Celebrity Accepts Invite to Marine Corps Ball by a Complete Stranger
The modern world is connected in more ways than ever before. One of the most prominent connections, or networks if you will, is that of social media. On the topic of social media, Facebook often comes immediately to mind. Some people use Facebook to keep in contact with their friends and family while others use Facebook’s social network for other means. A young marine, Jarrod Hash, found himself without a date for the Marine Corps Ball this past year (2015). He decided to try something bold and seemingly impossible; he asked Ronda Rousey, a famous MMA fighter, via a video post on August 22, 2015 to his Facebook wall. He did not know nor had he ever met Ronda on Facebook. Yet through Facebook’s social network, Ronda learned of his request and gladly accepted his offer to attend the marine corps ball with him. Her only reservations as she told TMZ were that she needed a way of contacting him and that he had to find other marine’s to ask some of her friends to the ball as well.
This achievement of asking a celebrity whom Jarrod had never met before, nor would dream of meeting, to a ball and receiving an acceptance to his invite seems nearly impossible. Yet, with the little help of the network found in Facebook, Jarrod’s dream came true. When Jarrod posted the video, all of his friends on Facebook saw his post. By them sharing the post, all of their individual friends saw the post. This cycle continued until people were seeing Jarrod’s post who had never met or heard of him before; again, the cycle continued further. Eventually one of Ronda’s friends saw the video and shared it as well, linking Jarrod to Ronda. This link was created by a series of nodes and edges in the Facebook social network where each node is a person and each edge is is the indication of the sharing of the post from one person to each of their friends. Similar to the image below, the network in Jarrod’s situation is on a much larger scale where Jarrod is the central node and Ronda is a node on the perimeter.
Networks like this occur everyday, especially on social media. From news to advertisements to startup companies to philanthropies, news travels fast on social media solely because of the existence of networks.
Source Video: https://www.facebook.com/a7xfanboy/videos/vb.1323596710/10207676492093350/?type=3&theater
Image: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/28/spotting-romantic-relationships-on-facebook/?_r=0