That was meant to be a friendly poke at you, sir. And to reiterate my disdain for barnyard funk.
No disrespect intended.
All righty. Hard to tell with text.
How many of these are we as home brewers likely to encounter?
These organisms are fairly ubiquitous, so we're very likely to encounter them if not using pasteurized must and stringent sanitation practices.... Or oxygen management AND sulfite to suppress them.
In the vast majority of cases we see here, when something is growing in someone's brew there is also a lot of headspace. But you say that there are things that CAN grow even if we keep that to a minimum. How important is SO2 management in controlling that?
Many contaminants create a pellicle in the presence of oxygen (i.e. with large headspace). This is the most obvious sign of contamination, and causes panic, anxiety, and causes the person to dump it, research, and/or ask for help.
But what happens most of the time when people smell and taste the brew? It's completely fine or at least mostly fine. So if a pellicle hadn't formed, people would never have known about the contaminant (especially in wine; beer can overcarbonate or develop sourness, unlike wine). Therefore if someone follows proper oxygen and headspace practices the vast majority of contamination go unnoticed. Furthermore if an off-flavor is detected and there's not a pellicle, most people will simply ascribe it to an idiosyncrasy of the yeast they pitched or whatever other ingredients there are.
Sometimes the contamination is even beneficial. LAB decrease acidity and can contribute positively to mouthfeel and flavor.
On the other hand, oxygen does increase the flavor contribution and growth of some microbes like Acetobacter, Pichia, and molds.
Proper sulfite levels reduce or eliminate the threat of almost all contaminants. Unfortunately some strains (especially Brett) can be rather sulfite-tolerant. Sanitation and nitrogen management (avoiding
excessive nutrient, combined with racking) certainly go a long way also.
there are genetic factors which affect what some people can taste and others cannot.
Certainly everyone's taste is different.
I happen to be what's called a supertaster and that affects how I perceive certain things like tannins and alpha acids. Maybe you are too; who knows?
I'm OK will people not liking or even appreciating "funk", but saying it tastes like feces is something else.
Fecal aroma & flavor come from enteric bacteria (and their production of butyric acid, among other things). A properly managed and conditioned wild fermentation should not have any of that. An unintentional contamination is more likely to cause such a flavor.
but 3 out of 4 times I've tried fermenting it, a bacteria infection quickly soured it in less than 24 hours.
Did you measure TA before and after? Otherwise it didn't happen.

Cherry juice, and the juice of most fruits are full of acid. Fermentation increases the perception of the acidity by removing the sugar. Perhaps the cheaper brands used more acidic (less ripe?) cherries.
Lactic acid bacteria generally make wine LESS sour through malolactic fermentation (and they can sometimes metabolize other acids to some extent).
71b may be a good yeast to try since it metabolizes ~20% of the acid in fruit juice.
I'm tempted to artificially lower the pH from the get-go to see if that inhibits the bacteria.
I can't imagine a scenario where adding acid would reduce acidity.
Hope this all makes sense!
Edit fixed autoincorrect errors