Personally, I find it troubling that most of the people involved in alt-coins and crypto outside of bitcoin are just chasing these "gainz". In the process, everything from insider trading to shilling is considered fair game.
I think, I could say yes. Why would I invest or trade on these shitcoins if its not on gains right? I have segregate funds for trading a normal project and these shitcoin. Shilling is maybe a tactics and actually for degen traders it really works.
This harms even those projects where the developers are actually sincere. Because nothing is working in this market without shilling.
You are right. Even with good projects or bigger legit ones without much news their coin will not gain so much attention, so I say that shilling is part of the technique too, well technical analysis works but lets admit when someone talking about the project everyone tempted to fomo.