Oh, it definitely was a thing on LJ too! The difference is that if 99% of communities fail hard, and only .1% succeed wildly, on LJ there were so many communities being created all the time that it felt like there were tons of successes all the time. DW is just enough smaller that .1% often feels like 0.

I had a comm I co-modded that was pretty active for awhile but probably hasn't had a post in five years (partly that's my fault as mod, for letting the community get overrun by self-promotional posts, but not entirely) and a photography one that still gets a post every month or so. And fictional_fans! All the others are completely dead.