A lot depends on the time when an event arrives, and what choice you make. For instance, if your villagers are just about living hand to mouth, the arrival of a couple of more mouths to feed might tip them over the edge into starvation, even though events like "Old Friends" and the "Barrel o' Babies" are generally considered "good" events. Similarly, If you've got a big tribe (90 or so) late on in the game pretty well any event won't affect them very much. Even if all their food is wiped out they'll normally collect a couple of thousand in a few minutes and not be at any risk. Even if all the tech points were lost, it wouldn't matter much as there's little to spend them on apart from fripperies like new clothes.

In a smaller tribe, however, such an event could be disastrous.

A lot of events have two possible outcomes; one bad, one good. In a couple of the cases already mentioned the players made the "bad" choice. If they'd made the other choice they'd probably reckon that the event itself was one to like, not hate.