Call for legacy stories

Every entry on this site follows the same arc: something good arrives, it works, Nigeria notices, and the weight of everyone piling on eventually wears it down. So far the record leans recent — apps, trends, internet culture. But the pattern is much older than the smartphone.

We are looking for the same arc from further back: the 1960s, 70s, 80s, 90s, or early 2000s. A business, a service, a craze, a technology, a scene — something that started well, spread fast, and was eventually ruined by all the attention; exploited, oversaturated, or corrupted once everyone caught on.

What counts

This is not just a request for the nostalgia by itself, or for "things that were different back then." It has to have the same shape as everything else here: good thing, everyone started doing it, then ruin. A few illustrative sketches of the kind of shape we mean, not real entries yet, just the pattern:

• A trade, import, or side hustle that was a smart, narrow opportunity until word spread and every street had five versions of it.

• A service or technology that worked because few people had access to it, until access became universal and the thing that made it special collapsed due to demand or corruption.

• A cultural wave — music, fashion, a slang, a craze — that peaked, then curdled once everyone was doing it for the wrong reasons.

If your memory has a clear before, a moment things changed, and a sense of what was lost, it likely qualifies. Vague nostalgia without that arc probably will not become an entry, but tell us anyway — the editors are better judges of what is usable than any set of examples.