Your mental health is #1. Hopefulness and camaraderie can enable you to solve seemingly impossible and overwhelming problems - but seemingly impossible problem

Your mental health is #1. Hopefulness and camaraderie can enable you to solve seemingly impossible and overwhelming problems - but seemingly impossible problems won't give you hope or camaraderie. (by "mental health", I mean analogous to physical health - being fit and in good shape). Posting this shows you already know it. Getting critical mass is a ordinary standard marketing problem. See "Crossing the Chasm". It's about niche marketing: it suggests ways targeting a very specific subset of users, and then adding another niche ("bowling alley") and another. It's not about geographical niches, but you could apply the approaches to "geo-niches". Though, it also might help your app if you target like-minded niches of people, e.g. based on sports, or cinemas, or plays. Or follow facebook's beginnings, and target local universities or schools... Marketing is just as much work as creating the product (if not more), and it sounds like you need some recuperation time if you want to tackle it. You can always launch again.