I dislike a lot of what's popular online too, but my suggestion was as curators we owe the community a greater responsibility in this early phase, despite our personal preferences.
Even if I were to be selfish, this is how I look at it - I can only curate for a niche once the platform gets mainstream attention. Without that mainstream attention, there won't be enough stuff I like to begin with! So, for now, I vote on engaging, popular stuff. I won't vote for shitposts, to be clear. Once the platform has matured, I can switch focus to voting on niche stuff. That's not to say I don't vote on stuff I love - of course I do, and I resteem them too.
I understand that, and for the most part I agree it has to be done. I'm even slightly hesitant about telling my friends about this site until there's more content that they would find engaging, and they are certainly more interested in mainstream culture than I am. And, you used a good word in that reply, "selfish", I hadn't really thought about voting for the things I enjoy as being selfish, I thought about it more as a sharing my interests and passions with other people, but there is certainly a selfish aspect to it when taken in the context of being in the early stages of building a more prosperous community. That being said, it's not something I personally have to worry about too much right now since my votes are fairly worthless, haha.
(and here comes more of my selfishness, it's all me, me, me, haha)
But, I guess the main point of my first comment is that either way, if things stay the same or if things are geared more towards a mainstream market, I'm going to have to actively seek out the things I actually enjoy, and that's fine with me, I've had a lot of practice over the last few years.
I'm with you there, I'm kind of embarrassed to recommend Steemit to my friends. They'll go running far away when they see some conspiracy theory or some crypto geeky posts on Trending.
The good news is Sub-communities are coming within a month or so. It'll be like subreddits on Reddit, so you can find your own niche and be active there. That's what I intend to do.
Haha, my friends have no problem listening to/reading conspiracy theories, if they did I probably wouldn't have any friends. But, yeah, the crypto stuff would probably put them off.
That is good news, I look forward to it.