Both were borne of the same womb and launched at very similar times. They were essentially horses that started at the same line - No 3 year difference here.
I don't disagree with some of the things you've said, although we certainly have no control over whether people wish to express interest in Monero in whatever way they see fit. That having been said, I think the "out the gate" bit is a key element here. Monero launched on 2014/04/18.Even though BBR was announced a few days later, it only launched a full month after Monero, on 2014/05/17. I know that in the grand scheme of things this may seem inconsequential, but in the rapidly moving altcoin space it meant a full month's lead on BBR. Whether that is the only element of Monero's current success...I don't know...but it certainly played a huge role at the outset.
I'm sure you might have pointed this out already, but I saw BBR (formerly Honeypenny) announcement was made April 20th. test-network was launched on April 26th. Monero thread was created April 25th, with main-net launched at same time . The 2014/04/18 date was when it was launched by TFT under BitMonero branding. Essentially the 'relaunch' by the new team was 25th. It was mostly under the radar while under the BMR branding, and even under the radar when under XMR branding in early days, I had to buy some OTC via PM's, because it wasn't listed on any exchanges at that time (the same goes for BBR, and that was added to exchanges even later)
This thread was created towards the end of May, and as you can see from
http://monerochain.info/charts/transactionsthat's where it began to get a bit of traction. I agree this scene is so fast moving, and agree it definitely had an affect, but it still doesn't seem such a huge gap, especially taking into account the lower price and less-steep emission curve of BBR