Fully agree with your post. I wrote about this as well recently, more support needs to be given for unpopular/new authors who write about general stuffs. But looking at how curation works, it still seems like writing about how great Steem is is still the best way to get upvotes from whales. That is really sad.
Whales and popular authors feel obliged to return voting favours in the game of circle jerking. It is even more disgusting when popular authors shit post multiple times a day leeching autovotes from their whale friends and thus depriving others the pie. Whatever remaining vp from these people are then used to support the so called #newsteem and claiming themselves to be Steem influencer. IMO circle jerking is far worse than bidbots, especially when the circle consist solely of whales and popular authors.
Actually, it isn't worse in my opinion (because bid bots also can cause some real damage, for example plunder the reward pool and devaluate the trending page), but I agree that it is a serious problem.