Why do people care if a film was nominated for Best Picture Oscar?

If one were to go to the internet, does anyone realize that Michael Caine has been in just about every great movie of the 2000's.  Here is a short list, The Quiet American, Quills, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, The Prestige, Inception, Children of Men.  I guess it doesn't hurt to be friends with Christopher Nolan as well.  Anyway, that is not the point of this post, I decided to write this up as a follow up to my academy awards picks for certain years.  Along with debating about what movies should have won, there is even a bigger argument if a great movie doesn't get nominated.  As I mentioned, what is so wrong with movies like American Psycho, Requiem for a Dream and Dancer in the Dark just being remembered as great movies by millions of fans and listed as influences in so many others.  What rectification do you get for the Oscar?  If Tarantino doesn't win does that make his career any less.  You could say it's like winning the super bowl.  If the super bowl was voted on by dozens of old people who are influence by just about every avenue you could think of, and fill out a ballot, its the BCS of the BCS.  You know what you get if you win an oscar, you get a little extra BO (yeah), a statue, and a place in the list of previous oscar winners that the Academy feels in needs to show every fucking year during the telecast.

People need to stop putting the Oscars as an end all be all of that year in movies.  They are bunk, they are bought, they are campaigned for.  If you gathered a couple hundred people to decide on a best movie of that year, you would have as much of a case that you were right vs what the academy selected.  The oscars only advantage is that it "worked hard" to be started in the 1930's, vs if you did something now you would be competing with a few thousand other people compiling top 10 lists of the year.  So way to go Academy you are old. 

But some people are pretty upset when a movie doesn't get nominated.  Like it some how makes their thought on a film seem substandard and not vindicated.  Children of Men was hands down in my mind the best film of 2006.  It is more testament to how great a movie is that doesn't get the publicity of the Oscars, doesn't get the recognition but still gets mentioned and recommended among the film community as a movie you must see.   You also have to think if your favorite movie that year did get nominated what happens? If you watch a movie simply because it was nominated you have that in your mindset that this has to be a great movie.  What do you do in those situations, try to find everything wrong with the movie, every flaw, every mischaracterization.  You don't enjoy it, and you don't appreciate it.  The first thing people say after a they see a movie that was nominated, is I don't get why that was nominated.

Damnit.