basic psychology.

Most people looking to make a quick buck in the cryptoworld will follow whatetever a person with enough authority like Elon Musk or any other big cryto influencer has to say about X or Y coin/nft. This is called authority bias. By doing this they (general public) don't have to bother to make their own research about the asset they want to invest in, they simply follow the influencer's advice, learn he basics and proceed to "invest" then wait for the alleged profits in the short-term which 99% of the time means losing most of your money/getting stuck holding worthless bags of cryptopoop

But, don't assume that the entire crypto community is the one falling for these traps. A big part of it has been through these type of schemes for a very long time and knows how to sniff out the obvious traps from the whales trying to manipulate the market. It's mainly the newcomers who fall for it and start injecting a bunch of capital into the market which then translates in massive spikes in the price (FOMO) and later trying to exit the market (panic selling) when the big boys decide it's time to cash out and charts are nothing but red arrows

All in all, you underestimate the power these rich bastards/influencers have and how easy it is for them to manipulate the general public during something like the ICO boom a few years ago or the NFT boom this year