Looking at today's Coinmarketcap and amazed at all these new fashionable coins ... newcomers who come to this market now do not even know about such veterans as Namecoin... once this were very promising coin.
It's not particularly surprising that newcomers to cryptocurrency don't have much interest in Namecoin. Namecoin is derived from the culture that permeated the Bitcoin community in 2010-2011, which was a culture that was here for the tech, not to make easy money. Today's cryptocurrency culture doesn't look much like that (sadly), so Namecoin is of little interest to them. On the other hand, there's plenty of interest in other areas, e.g. in the Tor community. Even a bit of media coverage now and then.
Real cypherpunks don't worry about whatever market fads are en vogue now. Cypherpunks write code.
It is very disappointing that no one needs coins that represent real technology ... people invest in DeFi without even thinking that in a month everyone will forget about these projects.