I think time will tell about Runes and Ordinals. Sometimes they come, then fade and then X years later people decide to bring them back and the original ones are worth a lot.
Time will tell?
Time only told us that Ordinals and Runes are useless and only launched by scammers who want to convince people to buy those shit tokens in order to steal bitcoins from victims officially and legally.
People must be too stupid to sell their bitcoins and buy Ordinals or Runes that have had dramatical price declines since the last three to two years. More dangerously, their falls will not stop there but will become worse and fall deeper in a bear market that possibly is in 2026 and 2027 years.
Time has shown that Ordinals, Runes, and similar projects are actually more of a distraction than a technical innovation, designed to persuade people to invest in worthless tokens. These structures are not only alien to Bitcoin's essence and philosophy, but also fuel speculation by diluting core values like decentralization and security.
If you don't accumulate Bitcoin and constantly gravitate towards these things or new trends, it's a huge mistake. That's what OP is trying to say. It's true that anything that doesn't work will always lead to a deeper decline.