one thing that make them popular is they have low barrier of entry, memecoins are often priced low, making them accessible to a broader audience, including new and small-scale investors who might be looking for "the next big thing", but i read somewhere that only 15 out of 1.4 million memecoin is success. that mean to much popularity that some people take advantage of that to creating pump and dump scheme. also influencer lot of them promoting memecoins.
It's not about the price in my opinion, but the benefits that might be obtained, from human nature in general wants the increase in coins owned to experience an exponential increase in price and that happens easily on memecoin, that's what makes memecoin popular.
In addition to the Pump and Dump scheme, the hype scheme is also quite interesting to have some profitable possibilities on memecoin, unlike other assets that have clear project utilities and fundamentals in the development of blockchain technology services.