I wouldn’t say all of these projects are automatically worthless,
They are injecting arbitrary data into the immutable database of a payment system. That is the definition of being worthless.
are they just another short lived hype wave that disappears as soon as attention fades and wallets run dry?
Well the Ordinals Attack started 2-3 years ago and has been going on ever since. So they don't really "fade away" without being blocked...