There are some but how many are really willing to support great content anymore and if there is no support, who is going to write it? I could earn just as much bid-botting a selfie as spending hours thinking and developing each article.
How are those who produce consistently meant to compete long-term?
I feel you brother.
What i tell myself is that perhaps Steemit (the website) has reached a large enough size that simply having good content isnt gonna cut it anymore. New users are constantly coming in, and with them more "competition" of to everyone's attention. of course, im not denying the bad side of human greed though that really represents a small portion of the users (influential as they are).
I like to believe that Steem is now at a size larger than we all can comprehend, there's always activity going on now. We might one day see an ecosystem akin to Medium.com, Instagram, even Youtube or Facebook, where the rules will be nothing like we have now.
As for the "passive income" SP abusers that delegates to bid bots, im positive that soon the ROI wont be as pretty, and people start jumping off the bid bots in search for higher gains opportunity. As for trying to keep Steem a "gift economy" platform (as coined by @stellabelle), we all know what to do. Most of us just dont do it because well..... it doesnt pay much.
But who knows, things might turn around.
As for me, i'm honestly still think myself as starting out and learning the social media game.
The problem is that once creativity is squashed, it becomes a grey army of mediocre.
well... creativity and quality (from a content point of view) is fully subjective.
I can love a meme image over how meta and dank it is and it can be poop to others, maybe it is poop and is exactly the reason i like it at that particular moment.
I've never made big money with my content so far and i'm okay with it. I know there are people that supports my work and its a matter of finding the right crowd that loves what i do. or maybe what i do needs to be improved, or more people needs to know what i do.
Still, looking at the big picture, knowing how things are like out there for content creators. I rather stay here and make the best of it.