Everything I've seen you say about Alexandria seems to be based on the idea that its purpose is to do something like replace the Pirate Bay. It can be used that way, but that's more of a "bonus feature" than the intended use case. Here's a new video interview that might help you understand it better:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzG7i-eThnwI've been aware of the project for something like a year now, and I personally accumulated FLO through both mining and buying it up in small amounts gradually over the last 10-12 months. I did this because I saw the potential in the project for guarding against censorship and rewriting of history, as well as the potential for content producers (like myself as an educator, or like my brother who is a musician) to publish and monetize their content directly to an audience.
I'm not the only person who did this.
I also know that a lot of people in the #Coinmarkets IRC channel bought up a ton of it right before it went onto Bittrex, and a bunch who grabbed it right afterwards. So that may account for what you're interpreting as the devs trying to engineer a pump.
The project is not a finished product yet, but it is a real thing; I was invited into the private alpha a few weeks ago and have used it and have it installed on the computer I'm typing this on.