I immediately thought of the "5 monkeys and a ladder" psychology study, in which the first monkey attempts to climb the ladder to get a banana and all of the monkeys are sprayed with water. Then one of the monkeys is replaced with a newcomer, who then tries to climb the ladder, but this time, the remaining original monkeys attack it. And so the replacing of the monkeys continues, until none of the monkeys knows what the deal with the ladder is and yet none attempt to climb it.
This is a popular story in dev/product culture but after a little more Googling, apparently it's apocryphal: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/games-primates-play/201...