Assess the Veracity of the Heuristic 'If It's Popular, It Must Be Crap'

Question

What are your thoughts on this heuristic? Have you encountered instances where popularity accurately reflects quality, or do you believe it's often a misleading indicator? Do you use it? What percentage of the time was it a useful indicator to you?

h2odragon · Accepted Answer

Popularity doesn't equate to quality or lack thereof; as far as I can see. Everybody's different: what a boring world it would be if that was not the case. Popularity is not about the thing that's popular, but the tribe (enjoying / hating) the thing.
I often avoid things while they're fads; even when its a case of genuine Quality. The experiences people are able to turn into fads like that are likely to be available later, after the noise has faded, when the tribal implications of the thing are no longer so severe.
"Firefly" was great. I didn't need to subscribe to a TV service to experience it "new"; I just waited until a DVD set showed up cheap. I don't think I lost anything by failing to join in the tribal, emotional dramas that surrounded it.

brudgers · Answer

The odds of the heuristic being correct are far less favorable than the odds that the person applying the heuristic is just plain wrong.
Or to put it another way, not seeing what other people see in X is probably a failure of your vision.
On the other hand, "if it's popular it's crap" is useful as a tribal identifier. Arbitrary standards of judgement always are.
Good luck.