I've checked that thread, and half of the poll are just clones of bitcoin (often of zcash and dash variety). Which is why I'd like to keep discussion in here to point out the merits of what is "real".

It seems that most of the board occupants are using different optics for that word, there seems to be strong preference for marketing rather than what is actually under the hood. This is fine thing to do for short term speculation (ie to ride pump and dump trends). The idea is that in the long term, altcoins ultimately compete both in terms of time-to-market and rigorous robustness (Bitcoin has both), and finally features (which the altcoins i've listed are offering).

Just like with anything else, marketing has little to say about fundamental qualities. If the product is significantly better than incubents, it will sell itself. I'd not consider the quality of marketing to make decisions to "HODL". Best thing you can do about marketing is write a bot to track amount of shilling for any given particular ticker to catch their pump campaigns early, but it's not really useful beyond that.