I'm sure status is part of it but I think it's almost certainly driven by "availability." Big names give more talks in more places and people follow their outp

I'm sure status is part of it but I think it's almost certainly driven by "availability." Big names give more talks in more places and people follow their outputs specifically (e.g., author-based alerts on PubMed or Google Scholar), so people are more aware of their work. There are often a lot of papers one could cite to make the same point, and people tend to go with the ones that they've already got in mind....