How do I even make something with "instant appeal" if I don't believe in it myself?

I've gone in circles for a long time trying to make appealing characters that will get a lot of attention, but I don't really understand how I would do that at all still.

I look at posts in other places and I can't really tell why some character design posts get a ton of attention while others don't? Sure it's sometimes obvious why some designs are bad but I can't usually tell between a mediocre design that gets only a few people interested and an amazing design that gets hundreds of upvotes, like I've seen popular posts with less elaborate designs than failed posts, I can't tell why some failed posts are bad designs at all.

Tutorials and such repeatedly hammer home the idea that it has to be instantly appealing and recognizable and unforgettable and nothing can save a design that doesn't do all those things (all those successful "bad art" designs still always hit this perfectly, I've seen zero examples of a successful thing with absolutely no appeal at all)

I've also tried making a bunch of random variations but every single thing I try just feels like a massive downgrade. I tried to give them exaggerated clothing and it looked stupid, I tried to give them smaller heads and that looked stupid, I tried to wildly exaggerate their silhouettes but their clothing looked really stupid, I removed most of the detail on their legs because something I've seen said that all the detail should be concentrated on the upper body, but that just looked dumb too, so its like everything I do is always the wrong answer.

I don't see how random practice is supposed to help me? I feel like I'm only getting faster at being completely wrong instead of actually getting better. All the things I've tried recently just look equally bad or worse. There have to be ways to make a good character but I don't think I can possibly find them by blind stumbling.

I don't know how I would get instant appeal partially because I've never even seen it work on me at all. Not once in my life have I seen advertising and then immediately went out to buy the thing. I don't find any elevator pitches more interesting than "slightly interesting". But "slightly interesting" is not "very interesting" so it doesn't work at all.

I've heard people say "ideas are useless, execution is all that matters". But to me execution is just a giant cluster of good ideas that you have to have together. It still also goes back to needing instant appeal because people's attention spans are very short nowadays. (Mainly in the sense that people see things that are instantly good so they don't want to spend any time looking at anything that takes any amount of time to be good). So I basically have to have a character where it's instantly obvious why I did everything and what their backstory is and why that is very interesting and not cliche or unoriginal at all.