Just read a book called Sway, a psychological treaties regarding why we as people make illogical and counter-productive choices. Even choices that effect our entire lives.
In order to make life easier on ourselves, we create shortcuts to deciding what kind of things merit our attention and consideration. We assign values to things.
In the art community, we assign value to art based on cues surrounding the art. The artist himself, and the kinds of people who are already giving the artist attention are such cues. If I suddenly posted photography of the quality we see among the geniuses in this community, it would not receive the same kind of