> Probably helps that many token founders don't seem too virtuous

This perception is exacerbated because this kind of stuff has been happening behind the scenes for half a decade

Many founders do want to collaborate with their community, a community that expects and begs for exchange listings, which the founders cant talk about in advance and the exchanges know that and basically extort them and dump on the community, making the founder look bad and radioactive from then on.

Many/most want their project to organically grow and get help from large whales along the way, but it's more likely that tokens which have high value and many coveted exchange listings have nothing organic about them at all and cannot be emulated. Any founder trying to emulate it get into these token crashing toxic arrangements leaving many community bagholders.

It is nearly impossible to tell the difference between founders, the best thing that has occurred is that nobody needs these exchanges anymore. liquidity went onchain.

I personally don't see the issue with this assuming you're not running scams or building projects but purely trading.