Appreciate the thoughtful comment @bashadow, and a bit of background on your own social Internet experience.
My own affinity for Steemit/Hive came as a result of my former favorite web format which I loosely refer to as "social blogging," which was an online mainstay for many writers and creative types between about 1998 and 2005 when MySpace and Facebook pretty much destroyed (at least for my money) what I think of as the thinking web.
When I found Steemit — quite by accident — in 2017, it was so similar to my old (long defunct) venues like Xanga, LiveJournal and Dairy-X that I made an account and got started... the whole decentralization, and blockchain and cryptocurrency angle was pretty much irrelevant to me... BUT I warmed to the idea of decentralized blockchains because it really appealed to me that there was no central company to go bunkrupt and all the time I'd invested in content creation would be lost.
To this day, that remains one of my primary inspirations for wanting to post my stuff here, rather than somewhere else.
Clearly, I DO make Hive-centric posts from time to time, but I have to check myself whenever I want to, and ask myself whether I really am adding anything of value to the discussion, or am I just taking a hot topic and trying to troll for a couple of larger upvotes. If I find myself admitting it's the latter, I generally end up hitting the "delete" button...
I know a lot of people are iffy about the whale fishing expeditions on some post and from some posters, but it is part of the package, people want to be seen and recognized, well most not all. A whale may take note of a shout out, whether that be a good note or a sour note, no one knows until it happens.
I was surprised the first time I was shouted out by an account I had never run into, it still happens but very infrequently for me but still a surprise when it does. I look and in most cases respond, in a very few it was a post or comment that needed no reply. It did lead to one down vote, as the shout out was from a know plagiarist.
I enjoyed some pow-wow interactions, and a lot of various para chat rooms, then I faded away from social side, to many people bugging me with ICQ. email junk, and I forget the other auto shout at and see if they are on-line tools/toys to annoy.
For a while steem had it right as a social sharing site, now I am not to sure about steem, not sure yet if I will sour on Hive, but so far it is doing good at traveling in the right direction steem was on for awhile.
!ENGAGE 25
I do think Hive will probably end up fine as long as those who are out there telling the world do so from a premise of it being a community and a social sharing platform, rather than a "make money scheme."
It's not that the rewards don't matter, but when it's the primary focus, it brings in people with a different objective than community building and creating an interesting venue.
ENGAGEtokens.