One tenant sent me over 200 photos showing the imperfections in the house.

Stained or just poly-ed cabinets hide imperfections much longer.Painting cabinets is not expensive but it adds up and adds time to turns if you scale to more properties.

We used a bit of a darker color here which seems to hide the wall imperfections a bit more.

I always have knock down ceilings  in my rentals, look nice and they hide imperfections .Pop corn  ceilings here are a sign of a outdated, unit they must go ! 

If they fall into the ocean, I'll take NV.Internet info is totally imperfect, but it doesn't take much to learn just a little bit about how it works elsewhere,  Takes very little to read rulings and regs by the Feds.  

Now sometimes in certain price points it's not possible as the drywall was thrown up wonky and if you didn't texture it would show imperfections.

Also, would it be better to go for a darker color to hide any future imperfections, or does it matter?

One thing that's burned into my mind while listening through the podcasts and reading is TAKE MASSIVE IMPERFECT ACTION! 

One thing you need to consider is that usually the popcorn ceilings or even troweled ceilings create a lot of dust plus it's an easy way for builders to hide imperfections and slam things through on cheap houses.If you scrape you might find a bunch of leveling problems and other things exposed that looks like crap unless it is coated and hidden in some way.The higher end homes here have the smooth ceilings just like the walls with heavy trim packages.

Imperfect biological machines with all the passions, desires, fears and destructive, irrational behaviors of animals we observe in the nature.