How is any of this surprising?

If you ask 1000 people what they like in a painting, you'll end up with the average. That's how surveys work, by definition.

That's not how you make anything extraordinary. That's the job of a creator who dives really really deep into their topic and comes up with all those details that make a difference - not that of the audience. If they could do it themselves, they wouldn't need you.

It's actually striking how this article is itself pretty cliché - like it's talking about itself on a meta level - in how it perfectly fits the contemporary narrative about how our popular culture is supposedly shallow and uninspired (or even more so: not as inspired as in "the good ol' days").