Oh, I did read about that. I just couldn't put two and two together, I guess. I did find it fascinating, and it seems every bit as useful-yet-non-intuitive as a number of other pixel art axioms, trends, doctrines, or whatever you want to call them.
I do think certain that tutorials in many ways define the pixel art community. For example, Cure, you've written one of the most comprehensive, widely referenced pixel art tutorials that I've come across. And it's helped me a lot. But it's interesting to see that it seems to influence a lot of new pixel artists, or at least correlate with the problems they're having. Thanks to your tutorial, most people who are new to pixel art tend to avoid the obvious jaggies, banding and pillow shading. But they seem to make the same mistakes with dithering, and I can't help but wonder if this is because dithering is brought up relatively early in your tutorial, and makes up a substantial portion of it. I've no idea if it is indeed because of your tutorial, I've just noticed that a lot of new pixel artists approach dithering as if it were mandatory.
And most of the other criticism that meets new pixel artists is stuff that isn't directly covered in your tutorial, because it's usually not specific to pixel art. It's stuff like composition, color theory, anatomy, perspective, etc. that people can and should learn elsewhere. But then they don't, often because they seem to think that pixel art is a free pass to making cool art without knowing how to paint. Oops, a little rant. Sorry. [Just to clarify, I'm not suggesting that your tutorial needs to cover everything, I'm just reflecting on the impact of your tutorial.]
In any community, there's going to be two camps - one which is willing to bend over backwards to help potential newcomers, and others who take the Mr. Miyagi approach and prefer to let newcomers do their own research and prove themselves. And most people fall somewhere in between, of course. But I think that helping members find the right tutorials with the right content has a huge impact. Perhaps in a few years, when I have a bit more knowledge, I will try to help with this.
TL;DR: The impact of any sort of trend or "rule" probably depends on two things: the degree to which it is used and mentioned by the most popular artists in the community, and the way it is described in tutorials.