I don't know if it *started* during the financial crisis, but it certainly has been accelerating in that timeframe.

My best guess is that the problem coincides with massive availability of capital—interest rates went exceptionally low, and there's been a massive amount of “money just sloshing around the market” (as my brother who works in finance puts it).

This gave us a shift toward startups that were completely unmoored from delivering things for customers… there was plenty of funding and capital to burn through, so as long as you could play “thought leader” you could keep raising more money, regardless of actual success with paying users. Getting funded this way also reinforces the self-described “genius” status of these egomaniac founders. So they go on to do this for a few years, burn through the cash, and when it fails, start all over again.

(That also rhymes with the dot-com boom, but we didn't have social media to amplify the insanity and clout chasing in the same way.)

Meanwhile, all the huge companies that *are* profitable were built on (or moving to) extraction… Facebook since forever, or Apple in their transition to services (we can do this for all of the “Magnificent 7”), so smaller companies are watching the worst behavior be rewarded with revenue and start chasing the same behaviors.

The situation is pretty bleak, though I also find it heartening that people (outside the usual suspects) are actually starting to notice that there is a problem.