then you will know that folks are more likely to vote on things that are already displaying "value" or that already have a large amount of votes
Sadly, people don't understand how the curation awards work.
Basically because the curation award is based on your steempower weight, you only get a big curation award if you vote before a whale, or at least before people who have more steempower than you. If you are voting for a post that already has a lot of money, all you are doing is transferring the curation award to the bigger accounts that voted before you.
tl:dr the curation reward is for discovery - so you need to front-run the bigger accounts, not vote after them.
It is unfortunate that most people don't understand that. But the fact is that people will always vote the the thing that looks popular. I think humans have an instinctive need to be a part of "the group" (many do at least) and will just follow what the mass says is good.