Glad I'm not the only one 😅
I got started recently too and like most platforms like this there is that positive reinforcement/dopamine hit cycle that gets you hooked. And that's fair enough, at least we know how that works and can cope with that. But I too felt like something was inbalanced here. Posts that seem to be successful (measured by $ value) are disproportionately helped by a couple of likes from a few 'influencial' accounts. I've not said this out loud because I thought I don't understand the statement yet, but does that mean

1. It takes money to make money and
2. It matters who you know.

If you take just those two ideas together, there's services like minnow-something that lets you feed the account some steem, mention a post and it'll upvote you until you make back at least how much you spent. It's a votebot! The system encourages you to buy Steem to make more Steem faster. There's a few people being very successful at it and I'm guessing most who aren't. And a network can't be built by people who are all creating content. Who's the consumer? I won't use the P word here yet, but I guess I needed a place to vent myself.

I've not given up on this yet, but I am a little less enthusiast overall.