Looking at dogecoin which is a meme coin abandoned by its developers but can be successful, I think it can also happen in other meme coins.
You can't use such reason to justify your statement about meme token. Doge was a different case. Meme coin was a speculative asset and it is all about its hype and even if a doge coin getting abandoned if it has someone as famous as elon musk behind that coin, it could easily gaining success, remember that most of people who invest to meme coin are just doing it for speculative purpose and nothing more and although doge is supported by elon himself SHIB could have various features to support its price and to make it able to compete with doge, after all both doge and SHIB have a really huge community that supports these two meme coins and if SHIB keep releasing something related to NFT then I think it could have a higher chance of getting its price at the same level to doge coin eventually.
Basically SHIB isn't only getting its valuation higher because of a mere hype but also because of the fact that it could build its feature and make itself more than just your ordinary meme coin but it’s still a meme coin regardless and highly speculative.
However, meme coins must have a very strong community and support from influential people. Let's just say Elon Musk is backing Doge Coin so it's almost $1 at the highest price. What's next for Shiba Inu?
Those were not strong communities but those were gambles to make instant money from investing in the meme token/shit token. That's why shiba was moving to be a defi coin because it will be even stronger than doge in terms of fundamentals.