I have high hopes for what steemit COULD BE, but if people don't start behaving more rationally, it will not survive.
People don't behave rationally. They behave emotionally.
Are you part of any of the minnow support groups, any discord, steemit.chat, or Facebook groups? Have you read the white paper? Are you watching any of the myriad of YouTube and DTube vidoes out there on how to succeed on Steemit? What about reading up on the plethora of blogposts written by people who have succeeded? I'm looking at your post history, and you've only started posting consistently since January 11. Success leaves clues. Steemit isn't a like a traditional job, and so if you're expecting to be paid for mere effort, you're gonna be bummed. But if you work to build relationships on here, like any other social network, I promise your experience will change.
I think you're getting too caught up in what other people are doing. If you go to my profile, you'll see a bunch of videos that I've started publishing on tips for newbies and minnows, as well as a bunch of old posts where I'm publicly troubleshooting my learning process on here. Watch and read a couple and see if they give you any ideas.
Also, your photography is beautiful. Thank you for sharing.
I'm not trying to make money or have huge success on here. I don't care. I would like to see a new social network grow and blossom and not be dictated by a mega-corporation, but that's not going to happen if the most featured product is garbage. Which, 90% of it is.
Okay, I think I understand your issue better now. So what are you doing to help surface better content?
To be honest, I'm very careful not to upvote garbage, no matter what their score, I'll flag crap content, and I upvote anything I deem worthy of real effort or originality. There is probably more I could do, but I am not at this moment. I am open to suggestions. I also pay absolutely no attention to reputation scores. Seriously. I mostly look at photography to be honest.