Familiarity creates success which reinforces familiarity in a fatal circle.

Evidence

In America, Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony is among the rarities. This selection reproduces itself in a fatal circle: the most familiar is the most successful and is therefore played again and again and made still more familiar. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 81

Categorization

• XREF: Connects directly to Milgrom-style positive feedback and network effects logic from earlier reading on reputation and institutions; also predicts modern algorithmic ‘popularity = recommendation = popularity’ loops.
• ADDENDUM: Directly relevant to ‘Grafting & Growth’ in the general sense of infrastructure feedback loops reinforcing themselves, though conceptually stronger as a media-system parallel.

Related

• Familiarity, not quality, drives which classical works get performed and canonized. (similarity 0.82)