I know that in general, the flashier a thing is -- that is, the more obvious effort that has been put into a thing's aesthetics -- the less likely that thing is to be great. My hypothesis is it's because time and money investment was put into aesthetics at the expense of making the product or service better.
Is this true in general? I’ve had the opposite experience. I’d love to see some data if you have any.
I've even seen it happen in real time with small YouTubers. They get money and start putting it into "production values", then more often than not the quality of their actual substance declines.
Of course, it's not 100%. There are some flashy things that also happen to be decent, and there are nonflashy things that suck. Flashiness is just a general indicator of what the priorities of the maker are.