As stated, the connection is "friend of".

I suppose since friendship is difficult to define, it can probably be restated to "has had a 1:1 conversation with" or something similar.

The "has had a 1:1 conversation with" gets very broad. E.g. I've had a 1:1 conversation with a Norwegian MP who sat in parliament in periods that means he almost certainly had 1:1 conversations with current NATO general secretary Jens Stoltenberg, son of former Norwegian foreign minister Thorvald Stoltenberg, and who certainly had conversations with Gro Harlem Brundtland, former Norwegian PM and WHO general secretary for years.

Those paths connects me to almost every world leader from the 1980's onwards.

What you'll quickly find is that some people have 1:1 conversations with a lot of people, and relatively "unimportant" politicians in particular do so both with "regular people" and all the other parliamentary members including the "important" ones, and there are many nexuses like that where once you find a connection to one it's a massive shortcut for a surprising proportion of the world.

The thing about the "unimportant politicians" is a thing in every industry.

As a relatively small YouTuber (50K subs), I have never really spoken to giant YouTubers with millions of subscribers.

But I have spoken to many medium sized YouTubers (100K-1M subs), who are speaking to those giant YouTubers as well as to me.

I don't know MrBeast, but I know a guy who has personally worked with him on videos.

One person can speak to a lot of imporant people throughout their career. You just have to meet them.

Yeah, that's what I meant by "nexuses like that" but see now I left unstated "everywhere"/"in every area". Politics is an obvious one, since we see them campaigning and talking to lots of people, but trade shows, professional associations, parties, jobs, incidental effects of jobs (talking to reporters who talk to "everyone") all tend to connect a lot of people to a smaller set of far better connected people.

Yes, it's very broad and yes, you have many 1:1 conversations.

Isn't this the point of this "six degrees" thing?