Memecoin is actually a shitcoin, regardless if it has market value or not. Though the most successful ones may not be considered one, but we're not talking about the value here to determine if it's a shitcoin or not, but it is the real use cases that matters.
Without Elon Musk, I think Memecoin will still exist, but it won't be as big as it is now until it reaches the top 20 on the market cap.
Yes it would still exist but not all of these memecoin will, none after the Dogecoin. Shiba was created and yeah it might exist but without Elon, that memecoin is irrelevant.
After Shiba, there could be no more memecoin after it without Elon's memecoin hype.