the.com/ripple effect
One small push, infinite strangers affected, zero of them invited to the meeting.
means A single action or event that spreads outward to cause a chain of further, often unforeseen, effects elsewhere.
from Straightforwardly visual: a pebble dropped in still water sends concentric rings outward from the point of impact. The physical phenomenon is ancient and obvious, but the phrase got lifted into figurative use — for social, economic, and emotional chains of consequence — mainly in the 20th century, as English liked borrowing water imagery for how one event 'spreads' through a system or community.
- origin
- literally from water circles spreading outward
- economics term
- describes how one job funds several others
- chaos theory cousin
- butterfly effect's more polite sibling
- social proof
- kindness shown to copy spreads three degrees out