If _everyone_ playing the game knew the rules, no-one would play. Like all fraudulent schemes, these are fundamentally dependent on getting in new marks.
These memecoins are essentially partially open Ponzi schemes; there are the organisers (occupying essentially the Charles Ponzi role), the naive marks (occupying the same role as the marks in a conventional Ponzi scheme), but in the middle you have the gamblers, the people who are _aware_ that it's a fraud, but also aware that if they get in at the right time they can take some money off the marks and the gamblers who misjudge their time of entry.
(To _some_ extent this dynamic exists in some conventional Ponzi and pyramid schemes; "this is obviously a fraud, but if I get in early I might be one of the winners" is a game that has been played before. Meme coins have really turned it up to 11 tho)