If you want to farm reasonable airdrops I suggest that you stick to testnets, they might take time but your efforts won't be wasted.
I simply don't understand this part of your post. Why should someone farm testnet if he isn't a developer or something? Testnet is just a separate Blockchain for testing a new project. Or is there any other meaning to it I don't know of? Those telegram airdrops were fun while it lasted. A lot of persons made some really good amount of money just by taping or playing those games. There are still a couple of them but there aren't worth wasting your time on. Like you said, the best way to making money in crypto is by trading and holding. So I agree with that.
2024 was the year of telegram meme coins development and hypes and the p2e games happened to be a tool that most of those projects used to promote their projects into mainstream Frontline like the notions and a few of the other play to earn coins that were louch on telegram via the Solana black chains, this hype games Solana network the popularity and traffic that their currently enjoying and no doubt we still have a few of such play to earn airdrops because I still see tones of my telegram friends advertising a few of the new coins on the status to earn more coins, but then we also have to accept that memetics is worthless and shouldn't be considered as an investment.