Inscriptions are not a fad or a threat but likely peaking as far as interest goes. They are simply a method of storing data on the Bitcoin timechain. Many other methods of storing data will likely be developed and some (most likely very few) may serve some purpose.

The bitcoin timechain is working as designed. It is a necessity to have incentives to use the scarce block space and inscriptions incentive this. This is good for fees which of course incentivizes miners long term.

Advantages of minting NFTs via BTC ordinal inscriptions:

Now consider: there is nothing stopping the devs of some other blockchain-ish network from adding similar on-chain NFT minting capability, so the first point above might be satisfied elsewhere for cheaper (albeit with less security, though such users might not care about security as much). It is similar to the 'smart-contract-chain' race that has been going on for the last while: ethereum had some success, so chains that have competing features started popping up all over the place. They're more centralized and thus 'cheaper/faster', but the users don't really know/understand why that matters anyways. They just want the features, for cheap.

So I think ordinal inscriptions will be a fad for the most part. It just seems unlikely that users will care enough about them to pay the fees that will come with an increasingly-popular bitcoin, when a (naively) similar feature is available elsewhere, for cheaper.

Inscriptions are rising in awareness and their utility will take root in the many people using them. There are here to stay so y'all better get used to them.

Neither. In the long term, Bitcoin will likely be the chain for “premium” expensive NFTs.