[dmos62]

Tangential, but I'm surprised that people here talk about looks as if it's something objective. I don't like how this car looks, but obviously there are other people with other tastes. I might be reading too much into people screaming "ugly" I guess.

[sedatk]

An individual’s opinion may not signify anything, but collectively, all those opinions decide if a product is successful or not.

[footydude]

Absolutely.

Though, we do have to be very careful with interpreting online commentary as representative the collective, when trying to understanding whether something is considered good/bad.

Firstly because only a small proportion of people voice their opinion publicly at all - so only a small proportion of opinions get heard.

Secondly because opinions that are voiced are much more likely to be definitive in nature (it's great / it's terrible) as people tend to be less willing to comment "it's ok" - so vociferous voices tend to dominant online discourse.

Finally, because online communities often represent a niche/specific demographic and so if you only see the views from a particularly online community it's a fair bet they are not very representative.

[dmos62]

That's my point. A single opinion is nothing on its own. Further, taste is such a thing where two people can have extremely different tastes, but both be right.

I guess my initial reaction was about presuming that some commenters here are presuming that their taste is the taste everyone has, but a more generous interpretation would have been that they are simply unhesitant to share their subjective point of view. So, I revise my take to the more generous one.