Why is LXDE losing its popularity among Linux users?

After trying out all the DEs including KDE, Unity, GNOME, XFCE and LXDE, I've found that the last one is a marvelous piece of engineering and is the only Desktop that follows the unix philosophy in the true sense.

In fact, it is not as much a DE as a meta-package consisting of components like openbox, lxpanel and lxappearance that you may as well assemble on your own! In other words, simplicity and minimalism which you don't find anywhere else.

But I was truly astonished when I visited LXDE forums (http://forum.lxde.org/) and found that it is quite inactive. There hasn't been a single post in the month of february. This indicates that lots of people have shifted to GNOME or KDE and forsaken this wonderful DE.

And the interesting part is that in most phronix benchmarks, LXDE turns out to be the fastest, then why do people insist on installing bloated monsters like Unity and GNOME. If all I use my machine to do "actual things" like browsing the Internet, checking emails, working with spreadsheets and other apps, then why is the choice of DE such an important thing?