I think its pretty clear with that, the good meme coin or fairly speaking the one that making it to the big exchange listing usually gains sudden recognition and massive investment.
its sort of lottery indeed, a meme coin could be comning out of nowhere and suddenly its listed in binance the next day, thats just how random it is, thats why many people that snipes them are willing to put all their money into sniping them by quantity over quality because they know things so random even the most undervalued meme coin might be valued hundred millions by the next week.
its like basically there's a force that causes some of the very specific meme coin suddenly got all the recognition in one fell swoop which is pretty strange but it is what it is.
the newer meme coin is a proof of that.
but sometime even the bigger whales are also playing some game with this, if you observe the dex propertly you might find out that these whales are always buying certain meme coin by large sum, sometime spread through multiple transaction through dexes in order to avoid being tailed by some shrimp and then the sudden massive pump begins.
Currently I agree with you that meme coins are currently experiencing a rapid increase due to speculation and sensation as well as being driven by social media which currently often reports about meme coins which are experiencing an increase, especially Shiba Inu which is in the top 10 coinmarketcap and Pepe which is is in the top 20 coinmarketcap.so this becomes a trend for everyone to get into.
unfortunately though by the time it either got popular in social media or listed in binance the price probably already soared which means there's no point in getting in other than just getting into some FOMO hypes, by that time, we more likely to lose some money.