When I first Joined the Steemit community, I was primarily in it for the personal gains, and not the participation in the network. I'd been involved in a few Cannabis-related social media platforms on which I tended to see the same people posting the same things, and was guilty of this myself: most of my posts were to simply sell tie dyes, or draw attention to my page so that people would find my dyes.
Here, I saw some people trying to game the system for their own gains, and getting away with it. So I got angry, and started downvoting any post that I saw as guilty of undermining the system that had such strong potential. But I also didn't really have the attention span to focus on curating or spreading quality content. Instead I just became the "time-waster karma police" (shout out to Radiohead for Karma Police, look up the music video on youtube!)
Anyway, I realized that for this to work, I have to not only keep watch for people being asses and trying to siphon value from the system, but I actually have to contribute some of my own work and thoughts and ideas. Not just bashing the negative, but supporting and participating in the positive.
That's all I really wanted to say..... Have a great day and thanks for reading!