It is a scam. It "works" for youtubers and other types of influencers because they have fans willing to take losses and give them something expensive if it means they get that influencer's attention. Such as helping them through the challenge solely so that they helped the influencer do something they wanted and therefore will probably get credited in the video or w/e

The definition of the paperclip challenge is to essentially value scam other players (and you could get in trouble for trying to do it "legit", as it is trying to scam other players). You will never get anything worthwhile out of it because you don't have the key element to how it works for the influencers. So it's best not to do it, both because it's a waste of time and because you could get banned for trying to scam people.