I think that as long as a story hasn't been recced in the particular category you've chosen, it doesn't matter if it's a popular story or if it's been recced before. It's true that recs comms are good for finding lesser-known stories, but I've also noticed that a lot of times it takes seeing several recs of a popular story for me to go ahead and check it out. (I think that I often prioritize new or little-known fic higher than the "big" stuff because I figure that I'll always remember the popular stories whereas I have to jump on the other ones when I find them ... and then I forget about the popular ones.)

Anyway ... I'm glad you got useful advice; I will admit (as a good example of brains being wired differently, too) that I honestly had no idea what you were asking because I didn't know you didn't know about the memories thing. Of course, when I first started reccing I thought a story couldn't have been recced in *any* category, so I'd spend a bunch of time looking through every single category in the memories to make sure that it wasn't in any of them rather than just checking the category I'd signed up for. No one follows instructions perfectly all the time. :D