Curiouser and curiouser

[dcseain]

I was playing for a good while with this this evening:

LiveJournal Connect! Enter your username in the left box, someone else's username (or a * for a random one) in the right box, and press the button! -> Quiet Mutual 2 chains No 1-hop Users to ignore: Coded by sachmet

I did more than a few searches from various random users to myself (including randomuser and downunder). All of my paths of connections connected to me through one of three people on my friends list: turtleduck, suecochran, or museinred.

This surprised me. I expected that more, or at least some, connections would come through madbodger and moviebear. Boy, was I was ever mistaken.

The world is not as i would imagine it, at least in this small way. Though I'm sure it's not as I would imagine in other ways which I choose to either ignore or not imagine/consider at this point in time.

Comments

this is strange

[dragonsea]

given that I have a relatively small friends list.

[madbodger.livejournal.com]

I suspect that's an artifact of how the tool works. It gathers data until it gets
a chain, then prints it. You can investigate this by disallowing the usual
starting points and seeing if you get the same-length chain via another path.
I've tried this a few times, and this seems to be generally true.

And you'll get nowhere spelling my username like that! I am not a bog!

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

randomuser -> opportunitygrrl -> melaniesuzanne -> vvalkyri (3 hops)

[aliza250.livejournal.com]

I got: aliza250 -> scruffycritter -> dcseain (2 hops)

I suspect that the people who were loaded into this toy's database first are selected preferentially.