Seems a bit hyperbolic to call it a curse. Things like these are on a spectrum for all languages and languages like C and many others are afflicted by ecosystems that are more or less community driven and leverage libraries to a greater or lesser extent. Doesn't really have to do with Lisps per se.

It is... a meme? I think it is an explanatory construct that was invented by lispers who were facing the declining Lisp popularity back then in 90s. It was looking very promising, and then it just lost its steam and now almost no one uses it. One can imagine "Lisp is a bad language" as an alternative explanation, but most lispers do not (and didn't) agree and they prefer the Lisp curse, because it paints Lisp as a language that it too good for its success.

I'm not taking sides here, I love Lisp, though I don't use it anymore (except elisp in emacs, but it doesn't count). My point is that debating the name itself distracts from the actual issue.

It really applies to all languages where the very process of developing extends the language. It is the modern day variant of the Babel curse: you end up with a perfect language for your problem understood by a single individual.

I’m reminded of Chuck Moore’s practice of always reimplementing everything. There’s benefits and drawbacks to this; calling it a curse is certainly a strong opinion.