When dogecoin started it was treated as a joke and the biggest shit coin there was, but about three years later it's still in the top 20. Namecoin's at 45 in market cap, and primecoin's at 81 in market cap, Namecoin claimed it would change the world's domain name system, and primecoin claimed it would do important prime number stuff. Ironically the joke dogecoin shit coin was a better long term investment.
On the other hand since the coingen coins started getting mass produced most new shit coins are worthless extremely quickly. Yobit's littered with valueless coins that don't have working networks.