From the perspective of regular users, inscriptions are merely inefficient transactions. Inscription TXs use more bytes than are strictly necessary for the sats transferred.

But efficiency is, to a degree, subjective. Single-sig is more efficient than multisig in terms of bytes, but multisig offers other (subjective) benefits to the user.

Likewise, inscriptions offer subjective benefits to those who desire them. It so happens that this particular subjective benefit is a fad which ought to die out in at most a few months (if history is any indicator).