It's true that we've got a lot of people who fall into that strange business of promoting a business or way of doing things.... as a business or way of doing things.
It's why when I read articles from online entrepreneurs, even the one's I like, I always try to keep in mind exactly how they earned their initial fortune.
Because if they earned the fortune they're boasting of, from boasting about their fortune and skills and how others can be like them, somethings fishy.
And we, as a society, have come to recognize people who try to make money from showing others how to make money, and with the occurrence of Ponzi schemes and other scams, we've come to have bad presumption about these people (though some of them, in my opinion Ramit Sethi is a prime example, seem to actually have made it work for them, and their work seems fairly elaborate).
As you say, it's up to us all to grow up, and try to define collectively what good value is, and how to properly reward it.
unfortunately this is exactly what happens with most of these guys but people always fall for the before vs after meme.