A product being everywhere tells you about its marketing budget, not its formula. That's not a conspiracy — it's just how launches work. These four questions are what's left once you take the noise out.
“My skin looks brighter after three weeks” is a result. “It feels so luxurious” is a feeling. Feelings are real, but they're also what packaging and fragrance are engineered to produce, and they tell you nothing about whether the product does its job.
The strongest signal that you're buying hype rather than solving a problem. If the product invented the need in your head in the last week, wait two more. Genuine problems are still there in a fortnight; manufactured ones usually aren't.
Most “breakthrough” launches are a familiar ingredient in a new format. That's fine — but it means an older, cheaper product probably does the same thing, and you can look for that instead of paying the launch premium.
Not a reason to dismiss a recommendation — almost everyone in beauty media earns something, including this site. It's a reason to weigh it. A reviewer who also names what they didn't like is more useful than one who loves everything.
If it's genuinely good, it'll still be good in six weeks, it'll be easier to get, and the reviews you read will be from people who used it for a while rather than people who got it free on launch day. Almost nothing in beauty is worth buying in week one.
Hype isn't lying to you exactly. It's just answering a different question than the one you're asking. You want to know if it works for you; the hype knows whether it sells.