The genre exists in a weird place. Progress Quest is maybe the start, and then you get Cow Clicker, which was definitely a parody but took off because everyone thought it was funny, and then Wikipedia tells me AdVenture Capitalist started as a parody but then became a popular and profitable game. And that's kind of the problem with the genre: it's kind of artistically meant as a parody or a joke, but people keep liking them and wanting more, and now it's a real genre, and a few of the games (like Paperclips) have a lot of artistic value far beyond the initial "haha it's not much of a game" joke.