^The thread is helping people out. It easily shows that hey, not many people are looking for this villager so don't bother trying to unload them for a million+ bells. People are still free to set their own prices.
I, personally, think it's a stupid idea that can lead to herd thinking tendencies. I also think it can devalue other villagers and sometimes the players that love them. Put a list of the villagers in alphabetical order with pics and then let everyone else decide on the prices for themselves, get some haggling involved and help people learn how to negotiate. It's NBD, and negotiating a way more useful skill, IMO, than someone saying, "This is pretty, so it must be expensive". I mean, seriously, people have a hard enough trying to fit in at school and work, so why make a video game into a popularity contest? I've never understood the concept.
Even without the thread, villager tiers will still exist. Villagers don't become popular/expensive because they're tiered high, they're tiered high because they're popular and expensive.
It doesn't matter how many people are looking for a villager. If someone thinks a tier 1 is worth 5 million Bells, they should charge 5mill Bells and vice versa. If a buyer isn't willing to pay that, then they should try to talk them down or find someone else that has the villager for a lower price just like IRL. Or they can just do their research ahead of time. Like I'm gonna look at the prices of webcams and return policies, etc. before I go and buy a webcam. There's no reason people can't do the same thing on these forums.
Besides, the real problem with the popularity thread, as I said before, is that it leads to herd thinking and influences how all the other players look at villagers.
You assume it leads to herd thinking, yet everyone I've seen on this forum mentions how they just go for villagers they like, regardless of popularity. And I already said that people can charge whatever they want, regardless of tiers. Popularity exists and it won't go away. Those same villagers are going to be popular regardless of someone's list.