Help a novice out

I’d like to get into a bit of shitcoin trading.. I’m capable of setting everything up in order to do that. My question is about scam coins and how exactly people get scammed. Is it simply a matter of people not being able to cash out their shitcoins back into something like ETH? Or are they just scams because pump and dump and people loose money? If it’s the former, it there a way to tell which ones are scams? I’m happy to gamble some money, but don’t want to see the coin shoot up and then not be able to cash out. Thank you!