Hot take: stop building communities around everything.
People are highly tribalist and banding together like that produces a lot of ugly outcomes. Communities form and likely won't go away, particularly the more people internalize them emotionally and integrate them into their identity.
It is exhausting to see a community for literally everything, even the smallest products.
You're raising an interesting point, but you're coming close to saying that communities are bad, and in my experience they don't have to be. Even ones based around a product.
Near where I used to live in the Valley, there was a real-world club for enthusiasts of a particular weird antique car. Not toxic, just eccentric. They just liked getting together and drinking in a nearby pub and showing off how they'd restored this or that aspect of the car.
I think our goals should be to replicate that kind of success.
I think the other posters in this thread have it right, that the reason why we usually can't is because our metrics are all about selling audiences to advertisers.
That's the problem... so much of both the communities and desire itself are manufactured. When they grow organically... cool, for the most part. But the minute money becomes a focus things go to hell.
People are highly tribalist and banding together like that produces a lot of ugly outcomes. Communities form and likely won't go away, particularly the more people internalize them emotionally and integrate them into their identity.
It is exhausting to see a community for literally everything, even the smallest products.
Perhaps we should let products simply exist.