Online >> real life for spreading ideas

I believe that internet culture influences real culture much more than the other way around. This is quite hard to prove, but I often see an idea start to come up in real-life conversations where I’ve seen it appear on Twitter a few weeks before. I’m not sure if ordinary people don’t realise this (that their ideas are workshopped and take root online), or if they just see it as that important.Furthermore, the internet is still quite meritocratic. Often one random blogger makes something their pet issue, and they get into the mainstream. Examples include:The pothole drama in the UK at the momentThe housing theory of everythingYIMBYism overall, to some extentThe rationalist conception of AI safetyReal life vs online idea-spreadingIn real life, you’d really pat yourself on the back if you could get your idea in front of a thousand people, including key figures in the field you’re talking about. This would be considered a great outcome of a year of lobbying and politicking. On the internet, this is achievable just by writing a blog post. The real life case has one remaining advantage, which is “the magic of in-person human connection”. People set a lot of store in this. I’m not sure this it’s actually that great.For one thing, it only happens once and then fades, so people might be convinced at the time you explain something to them, but then forget the details. Secondly, when you’re talking to people, they generally want to appear receptive to your ideas, so you get an inflated sense of how compelled they are. Third, speaking off the cuff will be more meandering and less to-the-point than a well written-up version of an idea; for me, I can generally write a “good” blog post at a rate of ~250 finished-words per hour of writing; speaking fluently will produce ~7500 words per hour, so each word has roughly “30 times less thought put into it”. Fourth, it doesn’t create common-knowledge, unless you do a workshop or something; people can’t talk about “the new idea that is go