Why are many obviously pointless papers published, or worse studied?
Some poorly-run institutions pay people to publish papers.  The pay is not based on the quality of the papers, only the number and possibly other useless information like the indexing of the paper.
Some poorly-run institutions require students to publish papers to get degrees, but the quality of the papers is not adequately assessed.
Some people do not realise their papers are pointless.
Some of the papers that are pointless in your opinion are not pointless to other people.

There are also many good papers.