Everything good is overrated

[KevShmev]

I saw this comment elsewhere recently, and thought it was pretty interesting, if not probably true.   

Discuss.

[LieLowTheWantedMan]

wat

[The Silent Cody]

Very not agree!!!!

[KevShmev]

If you think about it, somebody, somewhere, is always gonna act like something good is the greatest thing ever, which is basically overrating it.

[Gadough]

[black_biff_stadler]

^Shit

[wolfking]

That's fucking gold! 

[LieLowTheWantedMan]

Seen that gif so many times, but it still gets me.

[BlobVanDam]

Technically anything that is generally rated higher than your own opinion is overrated, although in practice I would say that there usually needs to be a fair gap between the general opinion and your own before you'd call it overrated (or underrated).

[MasterShakezula]

One could say that any piece of music that has a positive overall reception is overrated and any piece of music that has a negative overall reception is underrated. 

Which makes me wonder, which musical artist has the smallest % of fans and haters?

[black_biff_stadler]

Bette Midler

[j]

So by the same token, everything bad is underrated?

Or more accurately, everything is both overrated AND underrated, depending on the person doing the "rating".

-J

[Zantera]

I somewhat agree with the thread-title, mostly due to the fact that things are always blown out of proportions on the internet.

[Liberation]

The problem with "overrated" is that, to be honest, a lot of very popular things are popular for dumb reasons. Some are popular simply because they got insane promotion, not because they're actually good. Some are popular because of the common "I am really open-minded but if they DARE record anything different than their first 2/3/4 albums I'll hate them forever", and anything later that's different is automatically inferior (DT is also a good example). Especially the latter really gets on my nerves and should be pointed out because it's the stupidest phenomenon in music, yet it's very common.

[YtseBitsySpider]

Why don't you just rename this thread the "YBS vs. Porcupine Tree DTF smilefest Thread" because it's pretty much describing that scenario perfectly.

[Sir GuitarCozmo]

If you think about it, somebody, somewhere, is always gonna act like something good is the greatest thing ever, which is basically overrating it.

There are also plenty of people who act like something I consider to be complete shit is the greatest thing ever, so the range of what can be considered overrated it pretty big. 

[LudwigVan]

I think for this phenomenon to happen, a band has to achieve a certain 'consensus' level of 'good'.  You are universally loved by the music-buying public, you get tons of ink as a darling of the press media, and are generally acclaimed by music critics the world over.   For me, 3 bands immediately come to mind that fit this bill:  The Beatles, U2 and The Rolling Stones.

[ElliottTamer]

I don't really believe there is such as thing as being over- or underrated, except on a personal level. If one person thinks band A is great but another thinks it isn't, then one thinks the latter thinks band A is overrated by the first person, while the opposite is also true. But as long as we're speaking about anything more than individuals, that no longer applies.
Take DT's A Change of Seasons as an example. It's often ranked as the best Dream Theater song and even the Song Ranking from DTF ended with it at number 1. I don't think it is the best DT song ever, it's probably not even on my top 10. So I could say the songs is overrated, but that would be untrue. Because its position on the ranking was based on everyone's ratings of every song. It is not overrated (or underrated) because that ranking (just as a sales ranking) reflects everyone who loved it/bought it and everyone who didn't. Saying it is overrated is incredibly egocentric: it places your personal opinion above the general opinion, which includes your own; it implies that your opinion alone reflects the truth, while everyone else's joint opinion has no value.

[RuRoRul]

I think you've gone the wrong direction here - everything popular is overrated, if anything. Because, as we  know, not everyone likes the same things so for everything out there you'll have someone who really doesn't like it. And if that thing is really popular, then for that person it'll be overrated. Take Porcupine Tree on this forum. Probably the most popular band (other than DT, athough even that is debatable) on this forum. So when people don't like them (or don't like them as much), they say they are overrated.

Of course, technically, everything is overrated, since if someone dislikes something and another person likes it then that person is "overrating" it, making the term overrated pretty meaningless. I'd say whatever practical meaning it has, it only has at all when there is a huge discrepancy between the popular opinion and what you think. So if there's some band that I really don't like that a few people on this forum like, then I wouldn't say it is really "overrated" because it's not rater that highly (even though, technically, you could say someone liking something that you don't think is any good makes it overrated). But if there's a band I really don't think is any good that everyone on this forum loves, then I might say that it is overrated on this forum.

So yeah, the more popular something is, the more likely it is to be considered overrated. So everything popular is oeverrated is a more relevant description than everything good is overrated.