React is winning because of real-world experience. Blog posts are somewhat meaningless, arguing specific nuances back and forth. Who knows what's actually right. But when you actually sit down and learn React, and use it in a complex app, you understand how easily it lets you fine-tune performance, and instead of getting in the way it helps you along the path to blazingly fast UIs.
Nothing is magical out of the box, the key is to help the user along the way and that's exactly what React excels at. Performance is a definite factor for choosing React.
Software doesn't achieve the level of fame of React (or Ember, or Angular for that matter) solely by hype. It may have a brief period of fame, but several years long of building a passionate community means there probably is something there.