This has certainly been my experience as a graphic designer. I went to school out of state so any connection I had there I didn't have back home. Took me 5 years to finally get my lucky break in an internship for $11/hour. The internship gave me more skills that I was able to get my next job which I was at for 4 or 5 years. After I was let go from that job, I now had way more experience. I literally had a phone interview where they straight up told me "We don't see many with your level of experience."
Yet I sent out resume after resume and never got anything back (the phone interview was before I was laid off and was casually searching). Even with experience, it was worthless. The ONLY reason I got my job is because I knew someone who worked for the company. My old manager who had been laid off before me. Now he was a manager there. He knew me and respected me. I was able to get the job thanks to him.
I know of many skilled and experienced people who aren't able to find a new job. And know of inexperienced not as skilled people who were able to get jobs because of connections or being in the right time, right place.
When people say "luck", I don't think they mean something happening out of basically nothing. They mean luck in that they know the right person or happen to be in the right time/right place, like what was posted before with the How to Draw Manga Book artist.
To sum up, there are different factors to success. A good story, luck, knowing your audience and what they want, collabs, promotions, being visible. All that this thread is about is asking for a little bit more visibility for those with lower sub counts. Maybe some people do expect Tapas to feature them daily/weekly/monthly, but I think the majority do not. I don't think there's anything wrong with asking for a bit and it would be nice to even brainstorm and present ideas. But we can't even be at that point when there's nothing but strawman arguments happening.