I have mixed feelings about ICOs. Back then, they were the only way I could get tokens. I participated in their bounty campaigns, with the goal of later exchanging for BTC or ETH. So at least I was able to make a slight profit from the ones that made it to an exchange (spoiler alert, most of them never did, and the ones that did never reached the moon ... lol). I just remember people were throwing pretty much everything into the blockchain, and writing the craziest white papers. I gotta admit I was fascinated by some of those projects, and really believed in them (I was so young and innocent back then).
But, at least it gave me access to crypto, which considering the increase in the past couple years, I am happy about (even though I recently hit a snag with one of those ICOs and I am trying to recover my funds from their useless wallet).