Yeah, why anyone would hang around when profitability is only 0.02+ per MH is beyond me

Speak for yourself.
Dogecoin profitability is "only" 0.03+ MH/s.
BS. And trust me, I've been doing it. On several pools. I've made (not a huge amount, but still) more here per MH than mining straight DOGE. Difficulty just dropped a bit on DOGE and even with the diff drop the theoretical return is 10% less than what I did yesterday on middlecoin. And from experience, the theoretically calculated return of coins is always higher than what you actually manage to get. One of my rigs is still on doge, just a matter of principle to not put everything in one basket.