It is easy because they're airdrops but it's way easier before that you don't have to do tasks before you will become eligible for it. Like with all of those forks and availability of those wallets that you are holding their main token or mainnet token and you'll be eligible for it.
I think I have replied to similar question before. If you keep using crypto normally, and if you strike some luck, airdrops are still natural and you don't have to do anything to earn them.
For example, I got some zkfair tokens, because I'm active on zksync, this was unexpected and I didn't anything to earn zkfair token specifically.
I find it similar to what you mentioned about forks. You are holding particular coin and fork gives airdrop to holders of that coin, here you do your usual crypto stuff and some coin decides to reward you for it. What's different?
You're right but it's the opposite from the people that I am seeing that typically targeting these projects that soon to drop their airdrops. But as you've said, it's better to use them normally as if nothing you're expecting in return. Because the return of it is actually learning their chains and that's knowledge that you're gaining instead of the monetary or airdropping focus that the others are thinking about.