Lol $50,000 is nothing if you were around in the era of ICO. Airdrops were so rewarding, even the ones that were of meaningless tokens. I remember getting an airdrop of some random token and even forgot about selling off the coins, the token value would then go up to around $4k.
I'm also a part of that lost era, an era that will never come back if you're part of that era; airdrops are one of the most anticipated projects because it's easy for the coin to get in the market, and the investors will be in a hurry to buy
So yes, just like we saw faucets die out, airdrops will also become completely meaningless and a waste of time in the near future. In fact, most of them are already useless.
Airdrops in the past were very different from the airdrops we know today; in airdrops in the past, you just sent your address to the developer, and they would send you their coins right away without you doing anything, compared to airdrops today, where you do tons of task before you receive a small portion of the coin or token and sometimes airdrops are raffled on who gets the most number of tasks delivered