Hodling is just another term for long-term investing, and with long-term investing you should be 100% sure that you are making the right choice. If you don't do extensive and intelligent research (reading a few articles and discussions doesn't count), you are not investing, you are gambling, and the odds are really bad, because most altcoins are doomed in the long run, the world doesn't need thousands of coins, most users won't use more than 1-3 coins. Also most of those projects are some sort of a scam where no promises will ever be delivered. So, for newbies the simplest and most effective thing is to hodl Bitcoin, since it's 100% not a scam and it has the smallest chance to fail because it has the best developers in the world.
Agreed, and further adding to it if one decides to invest in project for long term, one of the most important factor many people don't pay heed to is how well funded the project is. Sure the tech behind any project makes it a strong contender but how that platform is getting fuelled, whether it's a community project or a venture backed project, these factors matters a lot as they keep any project breathing under the worst of bear markets.