Do you pay attention to the views of critics?

Critics of games, music, films, etc. Assuming the majority of us are sensible and will respond with "yes, but I don't let their opinions become my own", what would you say is more damaging to consumers: making decisions based purely off critical reception or the opinions of a specific critic/website ("I won't buy anything that scores lower than 80 on Metacritic!"), or blindly buying/preordering things that you essentially know nothing about based largely on marketing and/or brand loyalty ("there is no possible way this game can be bad - I love 'Aliens' and 'Borderlands'!")?