I know I'm late to the thread and responding to an OP which probably already has had his answer, but you're right in the sense that the greed is showing and the constant forking is not of benefit to the market or the image the community has for everyone else. The short-term impacts of the forks likely won't change the future for Bitcoin, but you never know. I don't think anyone even realizes that there are these various altcoins that exist, I know that I don't care about them and most people I have talked to don't even know about anything but the things that are on the surface like ETH and XRP when it comes to cryptos.

As for the first paragraph, it might make it look like a scam but a majority of people, as I just said, don't even know they exist. When they actually enter the community it just requires a question or two and more than enough people can show up and tell them that the forks are copies other people made and don't impact Bitcoin but exist nonetheless. It's all a game of getting people to ask the right questions and answering them properly and in a way they can understand so that we can avoid the issues that you're talking about.