feeling sorry for my future studes

I know I shouldn't, but I still get irritated when people use "popular" to describe things that are common but don't involve a preference or choice, e.g. "it's popular for languages to conjugate for person and number."

It seems that they're still mostly not using it for negative things - so it's still not synonymous with "common." But it's also not my meaning of popular, either.

I think I'm starting to understand what it feels like to be an old fogey afraid of language change. Help, the world is leaving me behind! I'm mortal and will die.