What is a concern to me is that all these newbie accounts created to spam this forum with Spectrecoin, snip...
This exactly. There is a user I don't remember the name that has put the same Spectrecoin post across half the topics I am watching. And I even received PM about it form some newbie. To me that is clear spamming and I choose not to be part of that community. The same goes for Deep Onion.
The coin looks good on paper and private coins are very popular at the moment and if there wasn't such aggressive marketing I would have already invested in it.
There is some truth in what you are saying. However, please note, that this is a project with pretty much 0 marketing budget at this point in time (hopefully will change once v 1.3.5 allows donating some staking rewards). Every little increase in adoption is due to a highly enthusiastic community, convincing technology and "bloody nuckles" from fighting against fudders and badmouthers. Sometimes the enthusiasm might go a little over board.