I also felt that way at times. When I'd spend quite a bit of time trying to put together a Post that I valued, about a topic I found important, only to have a handful of interest, both in views and upvotes.
Where I could write something on a Hive Hot Topic, put in less time & basic effort, and achieve many times more "reward" because know that Community has a massive force behind it.
Yeah there's definitely things that Hive just has no care for, because the community itself is so thin. Like you said there are ways for people to make a decent sum on here by just conforming to whatever is generally hot and liked by the wider demographic.
In my case I had that feeling that I had to write longer posts for it to be considered 'good' but these days that isn't how this place operates. You'll see people making bank by just posting pictures of other people's art. Posts with 300 words and two images. Some people that are untouchable and think they're on a moral high ground that get support purely because they have higher stake despite not being interesting.
I realised I was wasting my time trying to stretch out my posts because of how things used to be here, so I just cut them in half. If everyone else is posting like 300 - 600 words and making more than me, why am I beating myself up trying to reach 1k? Haha