Good content and the magical whale in the sky

I’ve been trying to wrap my head around the changes this HF21 is supposed to bring, skipping as much as possible over technical terms only devs and the likes understand. Before you say anything about that, please bear in mind the vast majority of users on this platform are just like me, they don’t understand shit about linear curves and other stuff like that. And so are the millions of potential users out there we’re trying to attract to the platform. Non-technical, with zero experience in cryptos, eco-systems and stuff like that.
After a lot of reading, there seems to be a consensus that small accounts and newbies are pretty much screwed once HF21 is implemented. Authors rewards will go down significantly and, not having much of stake, they can’t benefit from improved curation rewards, either. In other words, a new user making 5 cents on a post will be making even less. We already have a problem with user retention and there’s tons of dead accounts. With even less incentives, user retention will go down even further.
The solution, they say, is forcing whales and other big accounts curate more. Write good content and the magical whale in the sky will see it and upvote generously. First of all, I’ve been hearing this a lot over the past two years and and there’s only few big accounts that I know to actually read posts and curate. The aim of HF 21 is to enforce good behaviour, they say. Seriously? What do you think this is? Kindergarten?
As I’ve said many times before, our main problem here is circle-jerking. I don’t even know if we can call it a problem, it’s just the way things are and the sooner you figure it out the better you are. We all know what sort of reward a big account will make on any post, because they have powerful friends to upvote them and this is not going to change. Why would it since curation rewards are going up with HF21? All the more reason to keep the same people on auto-vote and get bigger rewards.

I do not think self-voting is our main issue, as there are many big accounts that do not post at all - they’re happy with what they earn from curation and will earn even more. I keep reading about the new era for curation - people who have been largely absent from the platform will suddenly spend hours pouring over dozens of posts to discover good content. If you actually believe this, you’re seriously deluded, I’m afraid. I’m one of the people who manually curates and read some posts, but honestly just a few. No way I could read what all the people I follow have to say, let alone discovering new users… TLDR means anything to you?
What is the small-account holder to do in this scenario? One of the answers I’ve seen a lot is increase their own stake. Since doing so through posting will be harder than it already is, the other option is investing in Steem. I get it, investing is good, it would drive the price up… The problem is where do we find these investors?
Many, many users are attracted to this platform by the promise they can earn money. People who do not have the money to invest. To get even 5000SP you’d need something like $2000. Any idea where we might find these people who have thousands of dollars around the house just waiting to invest in a coin that’s currently at 63 on CMC. How come they’re not already here if they have that kind of money? And why would they invest in something that would require further work, at least some curation to make them a profit, when they could easily dump the same money in Litecoin or anything else and wait for the bulls?
The way I see it, big accounts will thrive under HF21. No matter if they post or not, no matter if they post a couple of pictures of their day - it still counts as good content under Steemit rules and nothing will change that.
As for small accounts? I’m not making much money as it is, with even smaller rewards why would I even bother? I know it might come as a shock to some but there are actually people who research for hours to write a good post - or maybe let’s put it in the past tense, there were, because many have left… Why waste a few hours on a post in the hope the magical whale will see it? And then you log in and see people writing the same crap over and over again getting $15…
One of the reasons I’ve been on this platform for two years is that I believe monetization is the future of social-media, but at this point I doubt it that Steemit is going to be the one that makes it.