I read that thread and while I appreciate the sentiment I tend to disagree. Billions and billions of dollars are generated annually through Photorealistic renders and render capabilities. There is a strong industry for both stylistic and realistic rendering capability globally, which grows strongly each year in many, many forms of media. And just to add photography never truly did kill out photoreal artists either. The concepts discussed seem familiar from what I was taught at art school, that photography freed an artist into a realm of expressionism as the tedium of recreating "real" life was now taken over by the amazing "Camera Obscura". And while the concept did create a lot of shit modern art (mostly from my teachers), realism is still very alive in commercial art and even in arty art. And a lot of the reason is that art is a manipulation of what's possible in reality, so taking reality as a base you can move forward to a super reality, such as like you would see in Jurassic World or Furious 7. Stylised imagery influences a viewer in an entirely different way.

And as far as DS/Poser photo real characters you can definitely see a rapid progression since these programs were founded. Especially with Daz3D figures. And while things are not 100% perfect yet they are definitely progressing in the right direction. And I would expect the uncanny valley to be closed further and further in the coming years.

The concept that realism doesn't sell is not very solid. I believe what you're getting into is the concept of idealised beauty which is not restricted to just CG.