Before I start, my commentary pertains to media, it's not to be intended for or applied to people.
It's been my experience that the phrase "don't judge a book by it's cover" has been philosophically accepted by many audiences, when it comes to creative media, while in practice, being ignored.
I wanted to explore the idea and make the case that judging a piece of media by it's cover is not only natural, but practical.
The current state of society has become an attention economy, with everything from ads, to the very news itself vying for your attention. Audience attention is an increasingly valuable commodity.
For example, the Tapas platform alone hosts over 40,000 different comics and novels, that have been uploaded by the community.
Needless to say, going through all of these would be, for even the most avid reader, an impossible task, so for the sake of time and sanity, the user will of course be biased towards covers that match their genre preference.
The cover, serves as the very first impression of the creative product and it's the responsibility of the creator to ensure that the cover is a decent representation of what the overall product eventually is.
So, just ignore anything that you don't know?
I'm the first to agree this type of mindset is not perfect, I for one ignored Anime for years before I eventually gave it a go and fell in love the medium.
Certainly, I regret not having been more adventurous with my intake of creative media, that being said however, would I have tried this earlier and with a different mindset, then the one I had at the time, I might not have accepted the anime medium as easily.
What I propose in this thread, is to be selective, rather than discriminatory with regards to making judgements based on first impressions.
Meaning, judgements based on experience and tangible knowledge of the industry whose content it is you are actually judging.
Example: a gamer, not choosing a game because, there is a person holding a gun facing the camera, by this alone there is a large chance that this type of game will be a Call of Duty clone and will not appeal to said gamer's interests.
This selectivity can be taught and achieved in a variety of different ways.
From getting the opinions of others, eg: A trusted critic or reviewer, or asking members of the fan-base/community around the medium you want to get into. Allowing them to assist you into finding your niche.
To simply trying a little bit of everything and developing your tastes from there, utilizing the experience gained and inferring the type of story it will be simply from reference to other similar story covers.
Naturally there are always going to be exceptions, Evengallion looks like a typical mecha story to the average viewer, whereas in reality it's so much more than that.
However, all in all, I would still claim that to a careful and experienced eye, judging a product by the cover will allow for a 70% chance that it won't lead you astray.
I hope this technique helps you better find stories that you will appreciate,
-Pablo, Author of INTERMINUTE