When a new trends starts organically, it's all impulsive and genuine, then people start to profit on it and the game is over.
I think I have seen the same argument about anime conventions. The idea is that a trend starts with a small group of passionate people, as things get bigger and more popular, followers arrive. Followers are not really passionate, they just jump on the bandwagon, but will leave and jump on another bandwagon as the thing gets less trendy. With the followers come people who will try to profit on them since they represent a sizable market. Among the "exploiters" are former members of the original group, who see a find a way to monetize their passion, taking advantage of their deep knowledge of the field.
So the idea that "people start to profit and the game is over" is mostly right, but the dynamic is more complex than just having a small number of people ruining it from everyone else.
And it is not all bad. While the community is less genuine, it is also more productive, if anything, just from the sheer numbers.
I am among the ones responsible for that downfall. Simply, I moved on with my life, I stopped staffing, then I stopped attending, and so did the friends I made there, except for a few of them who somehow turned it into a job. The "new generation" is certainly passionate, but they have less to offer, simply because most of it is mainstream now. They don't have the budget for doing big things like the big commercial players, and they can't ignore copyright because owners actually care. As a result, their events are more like private clubs, for those that still exist.
On the bright side, we now have anime licensed and even produced in the west, we get to see major personalities, coming straight from Japan, and many things that were unthinkable when we started out.
And it’s basically just a natural and recurring cycle:
Phase 1: Novel thinker creates something new
Phase 2: Early adopters pick it up
Phase 3: General public joins in
Phase 4: Early adopters get crowded out by newcomers and turned off by lack of ‘authenticity’ and either retreat to obscure niches or leave in search of the next trend
The assumption seems to be that only the early adopters care, but that seems unnecessarily elitist.
Nonetheless, they do. Medium is the message and all that.
Which means, that even if they only want to be companies, they (unfortunately for all) indeed are the "social media" in some sense. Sometimes even borderline with "essential infrastructure".
What you describe is simply the nature of a trend, it's happened with everything from modern Occupy movements to the teachings of Jesus. Something original and authentic becomes stale after it's been repeated a million times over.
The problem is with trends themselves, the original idea is authentic, but then it passes like a wave in the frenzy of a "trend".