You have a great collection of useful videos - I've bookmarked that post and will share when I have new friends joining! I like the idea of curation trails, and those votes can really stack up in value if the curation trail master is any good. I use curation trail only for one trail and fanbase for about 4 trusted people here: I constantly go after my votes, reading material, and engaging.. I consider my actual reputation could be spoiled unless I do this - people follow me, not the curator that I follow.
On the issue of whether our votes truly matter, I initially thought you were referring to witness votes ;-) in which case, this 2 year-old post by @transparency may or may not still be relevant - on steemit, all upvotes (even for witnesses) aren't equal. I still screen the witness-category diligantly, believing my tiny vote is still counted.
You sound like you are doing a lot of good research on here. You should talk to @zingali, a noob like you who is planning on doing some write-ups on witnesses. Maybe you guys can collab. You're both smart and driven on the subject. He'll be interviewing a witness soon for a story.
Yes, some research is more profitable