Why do people ape into the memes but stay extremely skeptical of actual projects?

As the title says, I've been noticing more and more people rushing to spend money on meme coins (and the likes), in what I can only assume are the hopes of turning a massive profit out of a much smaller amount of money.

My question is, why are people so willing to literally gamble their money on meme coins and hype when much better projects with much more utility have existed for so long and are known to be much better and more trustworthy in the long term?

And on top of that, why is there so much skepticism about these real projects, but almost none on meme projects without any real roadmap or plan going into the future? Is it purely because people just accept the fact that the memes are nothing but degen gambling, or am I missing something here?