It all makes sense now.

We don't like to leave things unnoded. When we have a node idea, we like to bring it into being.

Now, here's the problem: The process of node creation is serial. We can only create nodes one at a time, even if we use multiple windows. But node ideas appear in parallel -- one idea leads to two or three more, and then each of these leads to two or three. So, while the number of nodes we have made increases linearly, the number of nodes we want to create increases exponentially.

Over time, the gap between the noded and the unnoded will finally cause us to snap.

This reasoning doesn't work! If, say, everybody2 has 5.7 ideas for nodes (on average) after reading any node, then the most nodes you'll ever want to node when there are already N nodes is 5.7N. So the number of nodes we want to create increases quadratically if the number of noders is static. If we assume linear growth of the number of nodes, the number will increase cubically. The only way to get exponential growth in the number of nodes we want to create is to have exponential growth in the number of noders. Apart from being impossible, this would lead to just constant delay between wanting to node something and it being noded (probably by somebody else). So it's really the cubical increase which will finally cause us all to snap. In my case, this may already have happened, as this node demonstrates.