Because early adopters had romantic notions of doing an end-around existing rule making organizations, tiered competition and fun-sucking tactics by expounding on the 'newness' and 'down to earth' of the subsport. And that got picked up by event marketing - there is no gravel event anywhere that doesn't have populist promotion.
And so this thread is really about how much growth-related cancer gravel events can sustain without being forced drop the populist pretense, without rulesing up and without strictly enforced category/tier/qualifier splits.