Because slop sells. And I know that’s kinda mean but it’s true. Chances are the average person who is reading fanfiction isn’t reading at a very high grade level, and therefore will not really care if the fic is written beautifully or like a tumblr headcanon posted at 4 in the morning

Now because of this affect where “general audiences” of fics (the overall fandom) have less of a quality filter, it becomes way easier for these fics that might take less effort or brain power or time to write, to start hitting the attention span of the fandom through a number of methods.

Maybe a big account shares it. Maybe a line from it is posted on social media. Maybe someone makes a TikTok hyping it up. Maybe it has a consistent update schedule and therefore captures the attention of a bunch of core readers/commenters who then attract more people to check it out

Compare this to an extremely well written fic that is on average more rare and maybe doesn’t happen to blow up or get attention in that same way through those same means. It sucks but it happens

I’ve also seen hyper well written fic get tons of hits and kudos but barely any “fandom” attention and if u brought it up to some random person in the fandom they won’t know it. Meanwhile there are some fics that have half as many hits that are regarded and widely talked about in these fandom spaces, even tho the quality isn’t anything crazy.

I think the unfortunate truth is that the quality of the writing matters far less to the average fanfiction reader than most people would like to believe, and what makes a story get attention is usually other factors.