Why is prog rock always called "snooty"?

 

I have never implied that but I will stand by the view that his assiduous promotion surely made it much easier for them to succeed and this was not something most bands received.  Likewise for GNR.  Yes, it was AXL's ego that destroyed the band but this is also much more likely to happen with these 'overnight success' cases than with a band that has spent a long time trying to break through.  The latter kind of band would not succeed without some measure of cohesion between the members. Whatever cohesion there was in GNR had already dissipated even by UYI 1&2. 

Use Your Illusion Pts 1 and 2.

I think one thing that had happened by the mid to late seventies was that prog listening and probably also prog playing had distanced itself a lot from some of its roots, which were actually rebellious and truly progressive at the time, but in say 1978 no longer. Which is normal because rebellion isn't something that can naturally be sustained over a long time. Prog became music for those who had found what they like and stuck with it. Now that doesn't work as an act of rebellion anymore, and may look like stagnation to many. Telling the then new upcoming movement that their music is just crappy won't help. (Regardless of how crappy it actually might have been .) Obviously the punk movement and later hip hop were susceptible to the very same tendency. And surely the music industry was always trying to find and hype the next hot sh..., as always later to the party than the real trendsetters but early enough to pretend to the majority that the sh.. is still hot.

This is all about sentiments and symbols, and not at all about the actual music - nothing of this would stop people producing good prog in 1979 and even 1985, and - beware! - good hip hop in 2015.

This happens to most new trends.  At a micro level, artists themselves go through this cycle where after a point of time (IF they have succeeded bigly), they are seen as the establishment and not hip music that rebels would want to listen to.  And as you say, this is completely irrespective of what kind of music the artists may be making.  That symbolism is too powerful for them to transcend.