Trading memecoins is zero-sum and you should avoid them:

for someone to win there needs someone to lose. And if you add fees & slippage, memecoins are negative.
If you see huge realized profit for KOLs, you should equally think someone got equally rekt on that meme.
So KOLs, industrial snippers, MEV, platforms and perhaps LPs are winners while dumb money who listen to KOLs on X are the losers.
KOLs will still frame memecoins as positive sum as long as new money is entering crypto ecosystem thus they can go higher for longer (this is PvE vs PvP mentality). The collapse is just delayed.
Perps are more complicated but in effect also zero sum: every long matches a short, so gains equal someone else's losses. Minus fees.
YET, perps have higher positive externality as at least they create more efficient market as MMs can hedge effectively, and we now have pre-IPOs etc.
Prediction markets, too, are zero sum but positive externality is prediction machine.
yet what sucks for PMs is that higher share of trading volumes come from speculating on sports and crypto - which is exactly why PMs get so much bad rep on tradfi media.
The good news is that even if we dislike memes, PMs or perps we can still join the winning side buy buying revenue distributing tokens.
Memes are rent extraction-> but you can buy $PUMP and benefit from it.
Most ppl lose money on perps->but you can win by buying $HYPE
Although same can't be said about FOMO (since no token) or Polymarket/Kalshi since we can't bet on their adoption:
the only way for KOLs to win on them is to be paid for sponsored posts.
So I'm conflicted.
FOMO app brings new people to crypto thanks to their L1/L2 and gas abstraction/improved UI -> it's a win for the industry even if they don't have token.
But retail who joins get REKT and might leave crypto for good -> lose for the industry.
But again, memes bring HUGE tx volumes and fees for L1s and DEXs like Uniswap-> so it's a win for crypto as a whole.
Similarly for PMs but at least some benefits are created for society. If they choose to go equity and skip token I'll be ... annoyed.
Overall, if you're average smart without a strategy, you should avoid speculating but at least your sacrificies are making somebody richer and helps us grow the pie.
Thin about it when you'll get liquidated or get rekt on a meme.
(FT article for reference).