There's no mystery. The way any story makes the front page is enough users upvote it from the "new" page for it to appear there.

So the answer to the question of "how did it make it there" is exactly what I said, enough upvoted it that it made it to the front page.

As to "why" those folks upvoted it, well, on that I have no idea.

What can I say, I'm a Billy simp, there's one just behind me as I'm writing this comment and for about a year now I've been forcing myself to buy a new one to put it on the right-side of my current desk (sometimes I'm too lazy for my own good, as in this case). So just seeing Billy in the title and as the actual subject of the blog-post made me upvote the submission, apparently I'm not alone in this.