I for one distinguish early on whether a coin is legit or 'shitcoin' these days from the initial review, But what saddens me and makes me second guess my self is how these 'shitcoins' can somehow survive, then become semi valuable on exchanges. I always see coins with no real world use earn a real value and I am sometimes scratching my head on how people think this project is going to become something in the crypto space.
Yeah, I agree with you. They rely on fake advertisements such as being listed in exchanges such as "M*&(DAJDLF" lol like it was Bittrex or any other greater exchanges. One thing I look at is the admin activity after the ICO. If they don't at least communicate with the community after that, it's automatically a shitcoin. Nobody buys a worthless crypto with no real team updates.
Yes, speaking of fake advertisement... recently many token had been announced that they will be listed in a new exchanges and the exchange confirmed that they will accept for trading those token. This is a strategy to make hype on their shitcoin and then they will delay the listing until it will announce that it will be pause due to some technical problems or market situation. This is connivance between those developer and the exchanges to make money and we should be careful with our decision in choosing a right coins.