I can understand your frustration and I have I have somewhat felt the same way. Steemit keeps going through phases. And it is really hard to predict where the upvotes are going to go. Right now we are in the BTC / Crypto / Liberty celeb phase. I think it is good that they are joining but they 100% sure payout to those posts no matter the content is bound to upset a lot of the people hustling for a few bits on here. I feel like in a week or two they will all be on here and then Steemit will go through another phase. There is no predicting what that is. I have done pretty good on here posting a wide variety of stuff but it still isn't without its frustration when I have posts that I have spent a lot of time on and are well liked but only make a dollar because a whale doesn't upvote it. I'm playing a long term game with this and I'm figuring it will take a year to really do well on here.