The desperation is just a symptom of other problems....the world economic situation become s more and Moreno paradoxical....all the technology available to ensure that we could all be well fed, housed and have enough free times during resources to enjoy our lives...and yet most of us are working harder than ever in an unforgiving job market.
Also we are so accustomed to selling ourselves and thinking in terms of marketing that as soon as the potential for personal gain makes itself seen, we use whatever method we can think of to attain it (and some are pretty bad at sugar coating. You seem pretty triggered by these f4f, but I think just as bad, if not worse, are those who are good at coming across like they care about the community when they are really scheming for personal gain. I'm unimpressed with most initiatives meant for minnows, the only one that I have few questions about is OCD because it focuses on quality content by minnows and also "employs" minnows as curators in a sense. I'd like to see more of these initiatives which are just as, if not more beneficial to the participants than the organizer and that are about more than helping to spam posts relating to the specific initiative.
I am writing some posts that are not so different from your suggested titles ;-) we do think alike although our situations are quite different. Always good to get a glimpse inside your world 時間があれば日本語を練習しましょう、僕は自分の始まったbe awesome discord channelをよく使っています,来て見てください。メンバーは多くはないけどいいところです. Our small new community based, our general chat is called "deep shit" where we go deep and get personal X-D
Edit: Jesus, I just saw how many comments you received and I almost don't want to comment on your posts anymore, it seems like I'm just giving you more work since it mustn't take you hours to read all your comments every week.
but you should, because without your reminder, i may have gotten lazy, and not responded to all comments! I'm trying to get better about this.