For that matter—the apps that communities are using that aren’t so aggressively exploiting addictive patterns—like the one you and I are using now—could it be that they’re at some level the norm, they’re just kind of boring beyond the small group of people who find them useful?
Methamphetamine is flashy and destructive, and its supply chain and sales force are the sort of thing romanticized in Breaking Bad—but billions drink tea (and nobody really glamorizes it).
To my mind, the norms of a specific subreddit or Local Co-Op Facebook Group or neighborhood gossip board tend to fall closer to the “tea” pattern than the “viral growth” paradigm. And those, and boring email, and transactional interfaces to companies that primarily do real-world stuff—those tend to take up the bulk of the time of the people in my life. But maybe I’m just old fashioned :)
You should look at the history of tea closer, namely the Opium Wars and how the desire to not deflate their economy via consumption lead to it. Technically also a demonstration of the harm of bad economic practices likd precious metal standards and mercantalism as well.
I don’t think the VC money does much but accelerate the end state, the apps would become addictive if they were held privately their entire lifespan.