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I am a visual artists too, and I see posts like this all the time, and I've personally experienced the low-effort stuff getting big. 
And on one hand, yeah, a win is a win. I don't think anyone is arguing the mechanics of how this happens. I agree that stuff like fan art gets more notes. Sometimes snappy little drawings have a much stronger and more relatable message, and that stuff can get more notes. Obviously your audience doesn't owe you anything.
But there is something really frustrating about all of it. Low effort stuff isnt' guaranteed to be successful either. So you can't gain the system by producing a lot of low effort noise. And sometimes the high-effort stuff is what gets you noticed by the people who matter. The stuff that builds connections with artists you admire, the stuff that might land you a job, or the art that becomes a successful print. You can still do everything the "right" way and not see anything from it. 
Its frustrating. I think people are allowed to feel frustrated by it and they're allowed to complain about it. People are allowed to have emotions and express those emotions.
This is like telling someone not to be upset when their favorite lamp is broken, or not to feel disappointed when they lose a competition, or not to sweat when it's hot outside. Why shouldn't they have the most natural reaction in the world? If people like something the artist sketched in 10 minutes better than something they spent months of painstaking work on, especially if the latter is genuinely a richer, deeper, more interesting work of art, and especially if the consumers in question prefer the throwaway sketch only because it's derived from some other popular thing, like a Star Wars character or something, of course the artist might feel resentful. I wouldn't dream of denying them their right to that emotion. Coping with human superficiality is one of the necessary evils of selling art. >

It's understandable to be upset about it, but again, I think you're mistaken to place the blame on consumers by calling them "superficial". People have limited time, patience and attention span; I somewhat addressed this in my 2nd point. And the more ambitious work might interest fewer people, but affect them more deeply; they'll be thinking about it in a year while the sketch might be forgotten tomorrow.
Of course, this assuming the ambitious work is as deep as the artist thinks it is, and by what criteria you measure that in the first place.
Besides, the throwaway sketch being derivative may be how most people found out about it in the first place, for example they followed the Star Wars tag on deviantart. I do think the focus on a handful of big IPs is a problem nowadays (something like Joker could have been an original story for example) but again, I don't blame consumers for it. People are tired and overworked, they want to spend their free time on something they are sure to enjoy.