The big difference is at least there was actual code uploaded and released on Github. These days it's only a white paper and they piggy back their tokens in buggy platforms like Ethereum. And the funny part is they get millions in funding. Did the community just got a lot more stupid?
But are they stupid? Most of the newbies only really know have experience of the prices rising. In the case of Bitcoin people who weren't around in 2014 seem to think that the price will rise forever without ever having a prolonged fall. The Netflix Bitcoin documentary is really funny, they apparently finished filming when the price was sub $300 and thought it was over. No one wanted to buy and they even said that the name was toxic and a new start was needed.
People now just see that ICOs come out and skyrocket in price. It doesn't matter if the project is trustworthy, worthwhile or even good, they just buy in and wait to cash out. If you invest in a load of crap and make loads of money, are you making bad investments?
I too used to like getting in early on the new coins, I have been going through my old harddrive and looking at some of the old wallets. Minicoin, Frozen, Animecoin, Dougcoin and Quark were all there, you can guess that I was a CPU coins guy! Only 2 of them are even still alive now, and Quark is the only one that is alive and kicking. It shows me that there was a lot of crap in 2013 too.