But they do notice when trendy fonts trend. And comic sans most certainly did trend, and it was that trend -- and not its relative font merit -- that made it so deridden. It is the Croc shoes of the font world. Wow that analogy works really well because while shoe snobs can rail off the problems with the mighty croc (ignoring its benefits), they completely miss the mark on why there is the general anti-croc backlash (hint -- hipsterism. Anti-populism. etc)

This article is dead-on.

Comic Sans shows up everywhere. Lecture slides, shop signs, product packaging... it (was|is)? ubiquitous.

Now, Lobster might twig in the minds of typography geeks and designers, but it isn't nearly prevalent enough to be in the concious of 99.999% of users. Let's face it, 99.999% users don't spend all their time on start-up websites.

a) It was included in the default font set of just about every computer sold from nineteen-ninety-something to today, and

b) It was the only default font that was "fun" and "not boring" to the great unwashed masses of typographically unsophisticated people (a category in which I include even myself)

So everybody from teenagers to grandmothers would look through their font list and go "boring, boring, boring, ooh this one looks like handwriting, that's fun, I'll go with that". The other reason it's derided is therefore that it's used by design-naive people and hence associated with bad design; Comic Sans is very likely to be accompanied by flashing pink text and ugly clip art.

While writing this, I suddenly noticed that the expenses reimbursement form sitting on the desk in front of me is in Comic Sans. So add "HR reps" to the list.