Great post. I'm such a newb, it never even occurred to me to upvote my own comments!

My pet peeve is all the articles about gaming the system and manipulating the algorithm.

Surely the goal is to have people interact naturally (and socially), and have the algorithm reward content that people enjoy?

So I refuse to worry about it. I upvote when I like something, post my own crap without optimizing, and wish for a day when Steemit's algorithm encourages other people to do the same.