it's no mystery....she herself said it only took her 30 minutes or so to come up with her "epistemolgy" [ofcourse she was bragging] and apply it to "reason". 'objectivism" is essentially a cult ideology...it's a "rational" conclusion based on a false or fudged premise (the dismissal of "universals" as "concepts" with no argument or evidence for doing so.) history is littered with mass appeal for these sorts of things. essentially a perversion of reason to support her idyllic view of man...but ofcourse diguised as "objectivity" or "reason". i would be shocked if it didn't have some sort of mass appeal. i'm not being cynical about the "masses" or anything it's just that that happens.
so she was basically a scam artist essentially the old premise of religion in general that for ex. you could say the universe was created by unicorns and it's essentially "true" until someone disproves it. you can't really disprove objectivism until you settle the problem of universals.......etc etc etc.
ofcourse i only know all this because i wasn't smart enough not to waste my time arguing with a bunch of objectivist
~M.E.