Antique furniture is nice because it looks pretty and uses sturdy materials. I don't buy it for the pleasure of knowing how many hours, days or weeks a person slaved over it in order to pay rent.
Good art is good art. Focusing on the time spent making it is a poor substitution for the ability to critique the art itself.
Anyway, people made this same argument when image editors came into their own. There is a long, tiresome generational tradition of artists thinking the new crowd has it too easy and doesn't appreciate the grit that goes into making art in earlier mediums. We can do better.
Same with ASCii- you could respect that it took some time to make it. What respect and feeling will there be for work in the future?
Everything generated or thought cheaply generated on whims. Everything throwaway.