Ardern, the 37-year-old prime minister of the country of 4.7 million, published a post on her Facebook page recently along with a photo of one of the hand-delivered letters she had received. "Going through a few letters and I love how many of these there are!", she wrote, along with an explanation of the rules of the game.
The letter to the PM was accompanied by a text, which read that "If you're reading this then it means our experiment has worked. We are testing how connected New Zealanders are, regardless of their place in the world." Most of the letters reportedly asked the prime minister about how she liked her job and what it was like to lead the island country.
The Prime Minister's Office has confirmed that Ardern has received 18 letters thus far, and has replied to each. Press secretary Sarah Austen-Smith clarified how the game works by explaining that several of the letters were sent forward with the help of Ardern's old school teacher, with another sent along by an uncle who works for the prime minister.
The surprising results of the six degrees experiment prompted Kiwis and people from countries around the world to voice their surprise, or recall with pride that New Zealand really was a tight-knit community-like nation.
Others pondered whether it would work in their own country.
In the comments section of Ardern's Facebook post, a teacher named Lesley, whose class has taken part in the experiment, thanked the prime minister "for the many replies and sharings you have posted over these postcards." Catherine, another teacher, voiced her excitement, noting that 8 children in her own class had sent letters. "I'll share this post with them so they know that theirs were amongst the received!" she wrote.
A few other users praised the politician for her openness, a user named Julena writing that this was "the first time I can recall that a Prime Minister has been known and seen and heard as being a real person."