A lot of them seem to be hastily assembled clone sites with very little effort put in and gimmicky marketing.
Yes, I would agree with that sentiment.
Do you guys have any thoughts on this... plague?
You created the thread 23 pages ago therefore have you read enough thoughts? It seems you probably would have by now and maybe noticed that the thread has outlived any purpose purely because when you have 20 posts per page and then have 23 pages of them, it really should have sufficed to answer your question.