Three things IMO:

1. The people involved aren't creative, creative people seek projects which they are passionate about and no one is actually passionate about internet Amway shit. Normally corporations get around this by paying teams of professionals, but that would eat into the profit margins too much to be viable in NFT land.
2. NFT shit is for no one, the purpose of it is to create the illusion of purpose, the only people involved are there to make profit by convincing other people that they will, in turn, make profit. No one has ever wanted to play the ape game, the audience is only theoretical, a marketing contrivance to make it seem like there is a legitimate demand for the token but it's all by speculators and for speculators.
3. Since the only purpose of all the flim-flam is to attract speculators there is a very real arms race to have the silliest shit, because that gets recognition and thus traction in a sea of identically worthless competitors. There is no barrier to entry, no real audience or purpose, only marketing. So the only goal of any NFT ecosystem is that people talk about it. Ironically the "slurp juice" shit is a massive coup de grace for the ape people because people paid attention to it.

The 90's X-treme comparisons are apt, because NFTs are an exercise in marketing nothing, where the only metric for success is to stand out.