> Not sure what you're even trying to get at here. Evidently. “how did X become so popular” does not mean that X is popular. “X is popular” is a statement abo

> Not sure what you're even trying to get at here. Evidently. “how did X become so popular” does not mean that X is popular. “X is popular” is a statement about the absolute popularity of X. “How did X become so popular” is a question about the change of popularity of X. It might or might not imply that X is popular in absolute terms. Let’s take the relatively niche sport of running-facefirst-into-a-rock. Last year there was only one athlete practicing it, this year there are 200. It is still a rounding error in popularity, yet you can ask “how did it become so popular?” When you ask that you don’t make a statement about the absolute popularity, but the change of it.