Not like stories without a multiverse aspect have any more meaning. If someone has an interesting story to tell but it conflicts with some other aspect of a larger storyline (but works well with the rest), why not branch it off so it can stay internally consistent with its own story and not have to worry about what some other producers thought would be cool?
It's the people who think you're an idiot for not following every variation or understanding which ones go together who are the assholes. They are also the idiots themselves IMO for putting so much importance on knowledge of a set of fictional universes (and I say this as a geek who loves diving in to fictional universes, I just understand not all such dives are equal and my own deeper dives don't make me better than anyone).