Hello @themarkymark,

I used to use upvoting services as I felt that sometimes a post I worked hard on could use a little more exposure, yet I digress, my views began to devolve into becoming dependent on them to an extent. I thought that buying upvotes to create good exposure is a good idea, and I still do- but there aren't any hard stops as to what can be voted on.

These "garbage posts" you speak of are everywhere, and although it's liberating to be able to share whatever we wish, a lot of times I feel that people only post to get rewards, not to communicate a message, nor share an experience.

I got interested in curating recently, but have found myself lost in the new tab for over half an hour, looking for something I wanted to help get more exposure. Either I was met with a picture and two lines of text, or the nicely written article got cheetah'd. At this early stage I feel like I'm at a loss.

There's nothing wrong with self-promotion or the bots, just people's constant misuse of them. I know that by running build-a-whale, you come across these issues a lot, and everyone has their brains racked on what to do about this. I feel if enough people did their best to be a good Steemian to fellow users, that the tide may turn at some point. How soon that will happen, depends on everyone taking an active initiative with themselves first... or at least I think it does.

With love,
shello