It sounds like you're explaining the popularity of the Lumineers or Mumford in Sons.
I'd hardly call beer advocate a "mob mentality" As best I can tell, Dogfish 90 is the most often rated beer on beer advocate, and in 11+ years it has amassed 7200 ratings. Out of what, a world population of 8 billion potential beer drinkers, 7200 people in 11 years hardly constitutes a mob.
And I'll take the collective opinion of 7200 beer geeks over the collective opinion of one or two beer geeks (or casual beer drinkers) any day.
If something is a 90 or above on beer advocate and has a good number of ratings, it's going to get my attention. If it has a 95 with 2400 ratings (the beer in question is Firestone Walker's Union Jack), I can assure you it's (the hoppy beer hating) Jaguar who is WRONG on this one.
Today I tasted a Firestone IPA.
All I can say is that it was the most repulsive beer that I have ever tasted in my life!
well that's about as surprising as someone who doesn't like shoegaze saying "i listened to Screen Vinyl Image and it was the worse noise i've ever heard in my life!"
perfectly understandable that you didn't like it given your dislike of hops, but fyi it's rate 95 on beeradvocate - putting it very very high on the list of best IPAs.
I don't think Beer Advocate is a good choice to rate beer. It is sort of mob mentality. Once the beer gets a good rating everyone else just follows along so they don't appear to be stupid. I have seen some great beers rated low and some bad beers rated high. It isn't like wine ratings which are done by one organization. If I see a great score on wine it is pretty much a given that it is pretty good.