I'd guess they invoked nostalgia in other photographers at the time about their old bad photos, so they thought it was brilliant. Like an inside thing only they understood.
For you, perhaps. I don't think there is an objective truth of "this is art, this is not art." I shared my experience of the pictures with you. Art is the experience of Art imo.
A large part of how you experience something is the context though. If people tell you something is great before showing then you are more likely to find something great about it, etc. So with that reasoning a large part of art is just telling people that it is art, it isn't the work itself but the belief that it is art that creates the art.
Context matters immensely. That’s why I can’t imagine posting an thought-provoking non-ironic short on, e.g., YouTube, knowing that it will be immediately accompanied by calls to watch 100 funniest fails and (with all my love for these creatures) wild foxes being pet or cockatoos mimicking cat meowing, and that a significant number of viewers will watch it while sitting in a toilet.
Contrasting with galleries, museums, private exhibitions surviving off subsidies or entrance fees—and I don’t think it’s as simple as “it’s just a new way of viewing that you don’t like because it’s new”—what we have settled for are “free” ad-supported platforms that are in effect much closer to casinos and malls, and to which convincing a visitor to not leave directly equals revenue.
There is, of course, this flip side, where presenting any visually unoriginal, self-gratifying, etc. work in context of an exhibition gives it not-necessarily-deserved value; and it could be that the ability to make the viewer feel something you want them to feel despite all that widely varying context is a valid skill.
