The BuzzFeed Principle of Internet Content is that people will share your posts if your posts make it feel like sharing them constitutes a form of self-expression. This is one of the many reasons why effort put into a post does not correlate with the post's popularity.
Part of the reason why trying to make a living off of creative work on the internet is so hard is that Working A Crowd is an entirely different skill set from creating things
It predates the internet, too, which is why publicity and distribution are careers and have been for some time. I know both offline and on plenty of fantastic creative folk who never really hit the big times because they aren't good at marketing themselves, which isn't any sort of failure on their part as an artist. It's an entirely different skillset.
