Dripen_Arn said:
basically: Popular is it's own distinct page that shows off what the most liked/faviorited posts were in any given day, week, or month. based on a post's raw numbers

meanwhile: Hot is just the normal page for posts with the search paramater order:rank auto-slapped onto it, which ironically has a more complex algorithm set to it than the popular page. where posts aren't segregated by day of upload but instead the value of an upvote or favorite bumping a post up is decreased as time goes on

so uh yeah, that's the best i can explain

Oh wow, I didn’t expect an actually helpful answer. Thank You