I get all that, and it's well reasoned for the most part.
Where your logic breaks down, and this is probably the most common logic error in American society, is the idea that anyone that was good at a job got funding. It's far more accurate that anyone who got funding ended up looking competent once they had immense help, at least in film. In basketball, the most competent people rise to the top, in film, it really does not work that way. There are no "talent scouts" it's a myth. A sports manager can't hire 10 people to make it look like a player scored a 3 pointer, it's live. But a studio can assign 10 people to run cameras, and will absolutely do that without watching one single demo reel from a "talented outsider"
Early days in the tech industry, a guy gave me some helpful advice. He said, "you're going to meet a lot of people out here with 5 million dollars, and you're going to incorrectly assume that they were smarter than you, or had a better idea, but 90% of them are just a person who was handed 10 million dollars and lost half of it because they were incompetent. That's the single most common story in Silicon Valley"
You say celebrities were special before they were hired. Sometimes, sure, but most of them were more average than you would ever care to believe, until a great scriptwriter put words in their mouths, until a pro lighting crew put them in the best possible light, until a team of makeup artists were hired to make them look way better than usual. It's just an organized effort to make you see wealthy people as better than us.
It's like if you told me that a guy deserved thousands of times my salary because he can lift 1000 lbs, but the reality is, that's just another guy my size with 25 people in the ceiling pulling up that barbell with invisible fishing lines. I've talked to people this year that were on set in Hollywood, and they didn't even know 10% of what I know about film production. They get paid 60k a year to turn the camera on and off and focus the lens. They don't need to know how to shoot a greenscreen, there's a helper that was hired to do it for them. Then don't need to write, helper. They don't need to cast, helper. These aren't superhumans. These are people that work less, know less, and get paid more than us, because they have the benefit of an organization.
Bryce Dallas Howard is great, and she's directed a Star Wars film. How sure are you that she even knows the difference between a Cooke S4 and an Angenueix 24-50? How about calibrating diffuser spill? Maybe she understands action keying with post additive motion blur? That's just a millionaire yelling action and cut, and yet I have no doubt in my mind that you would imagine the director of any Star Wars film as being at a dozen times my skill level. It's simply not true. But we elected a guy who inherited a skyscraper from dad, because we all thought he was a great businessman. After all, he does own a skyscraper. You know who has never been president? Anyone who actually had the intelligence to create the architectural blueprints for a skyscraper. That's a job 1000 times as difficult as buying a building with dad's money, but you don't know that guys name. The front of the building just has a huge sign that says the name of whoever had money, and we all give credit to that name, instead of the people that actually built the building.
I don't agree with manifest destiny. Creatives are oppressed by a system that makes every debutante look like they earned their way to the top, by rigging the game so heavily in their favor that everyone else begins to doubt themselves.
What about you Sean? Is every music video on MTV better directed than your films? I don't think so. But they all have more money than you. And if that isn't fair, what are we going to do about it? Wait to die? Compete solo against teams of 50? It sounds like a bad plan.
You know why I don't have funding yet? Because I don't have enough funding to even reach out to people that would help me if they ever did see my work. I came here to find connections, make friends, and network, and the results I've seen lead me to believe that about 1 in every 100 people would recognize the potential. In time, there would be 30-50 of us, and shortly thereafter, I'd have something I could take to venture capitalists for investment. My math shows this working.
But there are only 15 people here. I went to discord, and found film groups. 10 people exchanging memes, with an occasional post of a sunset shot on a vintage lens.
I went to facebook, and there were huge groups of people, with money, making cell phone films of their dogs. The cute dogs got more likes than everyone here's films combined.
I went to a crypto forum, and there were 16,000 members online, trading little pieces of paper with mario or luigi drawn crudely on them.
What I'm saying here is that the methods we've collectively been trying over the years have not been working, and the normal approach would be to try to switch up strategies. If nobody on the entire forum is making any money, I'm not sure what we have to loose. Our time doesn't really become valuable to others until we prove our competence, so why not try and make that a priority, via any means necessary?
Lastly, this thinking about the view count is another cyclic trap. I have low views so we shouldn't improve it and since we didn't it doesn't have many views so let's not improve it. A guy got drunk and fell in a swimming pool, 3 million views, is that the good filmmaker that deserves help? What about the guy who left his webcam on and fell asleep, and then got 16 grand in donations for snoring. He has more money than I do, do you think it's because he's a better director? Some of this logic is self defeating. Personally I hope you make it, and Mara too.