Right. An extra 1 or 2 points soon after submission gets you onto the front page, even if only briefly. That's enough to get your post in front of a lot of ey

Right. An extra 1 or 2 points soon after submission gets you onto the front page, even if only briefly. That's enough to get your post in front of a lot of eyeballs and then it can be judged on its own merits. Whereas if you don't get those critical early votes, you're stuck on the new page in front of just a small handful of eyeballs, and you're "judged" more by randomness than by merit.