I know a user that will mute you once you comment that crap...

Stop stalking me... 😂

You highlighted some very good points, this mentioning is really annoying. The stupid thing is actually that experienced users for whom this "tactic" works serve as role models. And most of them are not ashamed to jump from one "great curator" to the next. It just goes to show that Steemit has become one big begging game.
I'm still of the opinion that the netiquette (already written 6 years ago) should be mandatory reading before you are allowed to publish even a single sentence (be it as a comment, be it as a post) on Steemit... "Back in the day" we used to devour stuff like that to get off to a good start, nowhere to tarnish. Code of conduct internalized - good foundation... Nobody cares about that anymore and honestly it's also forced by some big curators and their inconsistency.
As a result, we have lost a lot of really dedicated and especially talented authors. The entertainment by contest participants is not in the sense of good authors or interested readers.

When you say a journalist found an article of yours through Google, I find that hard to believe: Steemit articles have been out of the SEO machinery for a long time: always similar headlines and strange, very specific hashtags (but again, overcrowded) are considered spam. And so, eventually, the entire platform is disregarded. Even when I type the exact headline of one of my (always unique) articles into Google search, the post doesn't show up for me! This is very sad.

I was really motivated (already yesterday) to go deeper into your points, but when I read, someone wants to revive the "good tags" via a contest, I feel quite sick. For this lack of understanding of "embrace creativity" and the rest of your post I lack any understanding and I do not want to deal further with the topic "New Generation Steemians". I know why my feed is so managable... 🤦‍♀️