Yep - and I found this because I'm trying out trailing curie, and pretty happy with it so far. But what you should recognize is that @hendrikdegrote has 1.6 million Steem Power and the overwhelming majority of the dollar value attributed to this post comes from that one vote. @curie has about 1/10th the Steem Power - so for better or worse, that's something to consider. The huge vote numbers + big payout can often preceed the actual number of views... it's strange, as it puts the cart before the horse, but these posts then make it into "hot" or "trending" and more people see it and it snowballs even more.
(And I know this because my huge break came from @hendrikdegrote upvoting an interview I did with the creator of the classic adventure game Myst - it made a huge difference. I was pretty proud of the effort I put into that piece, as I am sure @zenmotherfucker is proud of the effort put into this one, and rightly so. I've also seen another new friend, @nitesh9, explode from a couple of cents per article to almost $150 for a high-effort post about why we dream. It was noticed by @hendrikdegrote and @curie, just like this post and my post were - and again, call me biased, but the serious effort was rewarded.)
FYI - hendrikdegrote follows the curie trail just like you do, among over a hundred others. curie itself is a small part of the trail, but of course what triggers the whole trail, and of course hendrikdegrote is a significant part of it.
OK - I don't know what came first. I followed no trails and was a part of nothing at the time, and it all changed after that. :)
Stay away from minnow support project. They seek to control the content on steemit. https://steemit.com/steemit/@baronious/the-libtards-have-arrived
Stop spamming fantastic posts and content.