Greedy Minnows Chasing Whales – First impressions after my first week on Steemit

Greedy Minnows Chasing Whales – First impressions after my first week on Steemit
I joined Steemit a week ago. Before doing so I listened to all sorts of videos and podcasts about how to be successful on here. They pretty much all said “kiss whale ass”. Some even went out and said “follow the hottest, trending whales, leave lots of comments so you get their attention and they like your stuff, and that’s the best strategy for making money.”
I didn’t want to believe this or follow this route, so I just created original, creative posts that felt like had at least the same value as the “hot and trending posts” making 100s of dollars, even though those were sometimes as simple as a recipe, a tree blooming or a new haircut.
When I started posting I got many upvotes..and usually a post would get a few cents. Then a day later someone else would like it and all of a sudden it was $10 more. A friend excitedly explained to me that it must have been a whale. A what?
After a few days of watching this and keeping my eyes open regarding what the hot and trending posts are and who is posting them, I realized that this is how Steemit seems to work:
It’s like high school running after the popular people hoping their popularity and coolness might rub off on you, or like world politics – people opportunistically ass kissing wealthier, more powerful people in order to get some of their benefits.
This system is flawed. This creates reward for opportunistic, greedy, strategic users while it also creates pressure for the “whales” to go around liking posts in order to help out others. At least this is how I would feel as a whale…obligated to help others with my wealth and power and I would probably stop creating my own creative content altogether. This couldn’t have been the original philosophy of Steemit?
Also it creates mistrust when someone leaves you a nice comment. Are they being genuine or do they want my money and influence? At least as a poor minnow I still think the comments are real, but I imagine as a whale it must feel really sleazy after a while.
I have some friends on here, real life friends who are real life incredible artists. I’m also watching their posts compared to what is hot and trending at the moment. Here you have people who have spent their lives acquiring the skills and mastery to create incredible art. Their posts are also not really given the attention they deserve and here’s another flaw in the system. Why does a post only make money for 7 days? I also can’t resteem a friend's post that is more than 7 days old. These artists often took months to create a masterpiece….and here it can only make money and be resteemed for 7 days. What about reposting the same information a few weeks later? What if it took 6 months to create a painting but because of “plagiarism” I cannot share my own painting again in a new post?
(Incredible artist friends on Steemit that really create valuable content and deserve attention: @thermoplastic, @gric, @reinhard-schmid etc.)
I have been told to look at people’s wallets. That I should resteem posts of people with lots of money in their wallets and that it would give me a kickback. Really? This is how this world works? I hesitantly looked at my friend’s wallets. It actually made me feel uncomfortable and kind of dirty, like I was invading someone’s privacy, like secretly reading their diary. I don’t like this. This shouldn’t be the reason for making friends. I will make friends based on compatibility, authenticity, integrity…like I do in the real world as well. If that makes me stupid or a loser in this Steemit world so be it, but I’ll be able to continue living my life without feeling sleazy.
I think it’s different though for people who are famous online anyway and enter this arena with a lot of fans already here. I think those people can do very well…maybe because they are immediate whales?
Another thing I don’t like about Steemit is that you cannot delete any of your older posts. What if I change in 10 years? What if I develop in a completely different direction and have new opinions, but everything I’ve posted is now a permanent online record for the rest of my life? I don’t like this control. Again, I think that perpetuates posting superficial posts that can’t get you in trouble years later (like maybe this one).
Another thing that is missing is an option to filter the contents on the page into A) resteemed articles and B) original posts of that particular user. Often I go to a page because I’m interested in that person, but have to sift through dozens of resteemed items until I can find a post that this user actually created. A filter button would be helpful.
So, I’ve decided to give this experiment one month of my time and efforts. I will continue posting, what I think are high quality, original, creative posts and see how this continues. If my above observations are correct then I’m outta here. I don’t like how Facebook censors my Fanpages, but my private Facebook posts make a lot of old friends happy and that is more important to me than making a few cents (although my best friend would say “a few cents are better than a poke in the eye” lol and I am grateful for those cents but I don’t like the way Steemit seems to be a system that mostly rewards opportunism and greed. I also think it should protect the whales better in this sense…maybe it should actually be called: whales and minnows and/or minnows in sharks clothing…).
And since posts with pictures get more attention, here is a gratuitous picture of my cat Nelly.

P.S.I’m tagging this post as #introducemyself because that seems to actually get some attention…and I’m still new. I hope the tagging police (which I later found out, after they freaked me out on my second day, aren’t actual Steemit officials anyway) will give me a break this time.