As a digital artist I find them highly intriguing to consider. As a person I still can't figure out why people would be paying me for a hash and not actually get anything.
Why not buy Bitcoins instead? I think it has to do with the cool factor. It feels probably better to own an NFT than a Bitcoin, as it feels different to own actual art than stock in the Coca-Cola company.
(I can only guess though, I have never owned any of those.)
2. Charity: It's hard to really grok this if you don't live in the crypto world but people make insane amounts of money from Ethereum. I know multiple people who are under 30 and have each made upwards of $500,000,000 from buying ETH in the presale / insider trading in bull markets. Generally someone who bought into the ETH presale is a mega crypto bull and keeps a large percentage of their net worth in crypto. It's trivial for them to support artists by buying their artwork for a minuscule fraction of the money they've made. What sounds like "buying a .jpg for thousands of dollars" to someone not in this world, is more like the crypto equivalent of tipping a live streamer a bit on twitch.
Second of all - why do people pay more for a limited edition print than a normal print?