Well, first of all i respect your opinion. Non of us knows yet if DeepOnion will be scam or not either. Like i didn't know about Ethereum in 2016. Everyone sad it was scam, but you know....
Personally i beleive in DO, and not just becuase of the airdrop, rather than the facts below:
The facts why i like it:
-so far they are in time with developements.
-I do like the idea of upcoming votecentral.
-There is Q&A of one of the founder every month. You can see its face (He seems to be a decent guy.)
-They tend to make quality graphics designs. ( it is important because they spend lot of hours)
-There is a weekly newsletter which is very detailed (included infos about news develeopers, BTC analysis, roadmap update and so on), not just a 10 row long scam text.
-Airdrop is working well, and has strict rules, not just freely distrbuted.
-There is a decent transparency over airdropped funds.
-Wallet works perfectly, staking nicely, fast.
-They changed spammy behavious of their domination tasks.
I agree that after airdrop period it could be challenging times for DO. Maybe it will fall, maybe not. But considering the facts and the hard work behind this coin i'm pretty sure developers won't leave the project even if DO falls behind 1 USD. So i guess it is not scam.
But i agree that lots of DO "lovers" (users) are mad just because of the airdrop. These greedy people will sell the hell out of this coin before airdrop ends, or when they feel unpleasent becuase of dumping. Will see, i keep my fingers crossed.