Useful term I discovered this week: “toxic mimicry”. It’s the pattern of substituting systems/organisations/services that look superficially like they fill a core societal need but in fact act to take up the space that a genuine system would fill, and only provide virtual nutrition.

Examples:
- 6pm TV news mimics public discourse
- Malls mimic public spaces
- Daycare mimics collective child rearing

I like the term as it suggests something predatory and insidious.