It was a trend that many people got involved in because of the hype that was around it then. Many of the people who were involved in this airdrops then hunting and chasing them tirelessly have now quit or abandoned it simply because they did not benefit as much as they expected from the airdrops. The people who from these airdrops became introduced to investing in cryptocurrency and developed an interest in it are fewer considering that most of the people who were involved in the airdrops were simply more interested in making profits than gaining knowledge.
A lot of people have put there hope in all this airdrop and just exactly what you said it's a trend and it's Gradually fading away because it's one issue or the other and the most common is that they will not pay or when they eventually pay it's going to be peanut and a lot of people are already losing intrest in all those telegram airdrops and I don't blame them because they already given there selfs high hope and it is getting worse so plenty people are not intrested.
And those times used in doing airdrops should be rather invested in bitcoin of something at least those once will yield something, I will not discourage people not to try there luck because there people that are making money out of all this and I can also testify that have benefited a lot from ot but it's looking more of scam to people now so trying your luck is not bad.