... so the private value to each viewer of the film/song/book exceeds the total social value (alternatively stated, each viewer contributes to the feeling-of-missing-out among non-viewers which is a negative externality) ...
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That is all true. But I do also feel like the "want to see X because other people have seen X regardless of quality just to know what they're talking about" thing is genuine; I've certainly had that urge myself.
I think it's real; I also think it's adaptive. If you want to know who to follow on twitter, graphing your follows' follows isn't a bad idea. You're not solving the search problem by searching on quality, and quality isn't guaranteed, but you'll probably come close to 80/20ing it
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I wanna point out again that "things that are popular for being popular" looks very good against e.g. "things that are popular for being scarce" or "things that are popular because Glorious Leader says they are," and probably gets you closest to "...because they're actually good"
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Also — and I do think this is important — when your product gains value by virtue of being accessible, you want accessibility. To some extent, one might expect piracy not because it subverts this process, but because it's integral to it.
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