I don't really get it- why are pageviews so important?

Also, why do some people trick others into gaining more pageviews for themselves? They should be earned because the person wanted to visit the person's page, not because you tricked them.

Meh, maybe I'm overreacting or something. You see (ahem, if you don't want to waste your life, I suggest you stop reading NOW) I got this message that an account called : iconnarutosfangirl : devwatched me. So naturally I went to her page to go thank her. But when I got there, there were already tons of people who were thanking her. And when I glaced at her reent activity, I saw that she had just joined today. Of course I was impressed that although the account had been created today, she had over 3000 (now over 4000) pageviews. However after thanking her and stuff and went back to my page- guess what?

SHE WASN'T THERE!!! Appearently, others who had recieved the same message also didn't have her in there devwatch list (okay, I'm kinda stalkerish, sue me.) It wasn't until after I got home from school when even more people began to take notice of this.

So long story short, I got tricked. Am I mad at her? No. Actually, I thought that her plan was kinda smart. However, instead I'm just... well, confused.

...

Why ARE pageviews important?