That's a pretty dumb way to look at it. The only reason we're having this convo in the first place is because someone banked on popularity when someone else contradicted their taste. That's the only time I've seen it invoked, is when it's used as an empty "well bunches of people can't be wrong!"

It's a ****ty validation of an artist's worth even in context of other qualities because it is an unreliable model. The only reason you would think otherwise is because popularity doesn't contradict your taste.

yeah it’s pretty funny

Yeah, but he brought up a good point, Eminem can't be that bad if he's consistently retained popularity, you guys just don't want to accept it because it contradicts your taste.

Wrong. Cut the faith in modern man.

No, it's true. Cut the need to feel validated.

Not considering the popularity of an artist when determining whether an artist is good is a need for validation?

You might have me confused with someone else.

I like how instead of judging his music on its merit, breaking it down and dissecting it, what's good, what's bad, we feel the need to compare our own internal responses to others in search for acceptance, thus making it abouts us, rather than the music itself.

Absolutely.

You completely dismissed popular opinion, saying that most popular artists pull from musical morons that only listen because they don't know better. That is exactly what I'm talking about. You said that to validate your own opinion. It's as dumb as him bringing it up when Qqwweerrtty said that he personally doesn't think Eminem was very good of an artist in the first place. I agree, discussing personal opinion makes that useless and it's really boring to bring up something like that in these kinds of discussions. You tried to make it objective though. If you want to speak objectively like that than realize that the objective opinion on something as subjective as art belongs to the masses. Not you. No matter how musically retarded you want to think they are.

Strawman. That's clearly not how I view music. The rest is not worth reading if that's your premise.