That's how addiction being generated, your adrenaline increases and each time you win or you lose its added a lot either with your enjoyment or your frustration, betting either against the public or following the favorite depends on how you see your potential edge, though like what you stated no one knows what will be the outcome, a kind of risk that you needed to embrace and you needed to overcome as if you can't handle it, things might go wrong and will ruined everything not limited with your finances but moreso with your relationships.
The choice is ours to make because we are the ones being affected directly and not the public. The public opinion shouldn't influence or matter in the decision we take about our own life. If we keep seeking validation from the public, we'll never do anything on our own. I have seen a gambler miss out on a big victory because he listen to what the public had to say. He had his bet on a draw in one of the games that played last week but changed his mind after listening to conversation going on and it turned out to be a wrong decision.
Many gamblers has been in this type of situations because they didn't trust the prediction that they have chosen but believe that others opinions matter. You can only use their opinion as guidelines for selecting yours but not as a final decision without doing your findings.