The reward pool side of things is just them going through the top posts of the day and hitting a few of them, nothing particularly select and not personal. Again they definitely miss some of the people that deserve it more, and aren't looking at historical rewards/held HP to make those decisions.
that does sound like a conspiracy theory
There's definitely a tiny bit of that too. There are curators of numerous curation guilds on here that have less HP than me, have made 70k historically, but still make $30 a post and are never hit with a downvote. Yet those curators will choose who to curate based on their engagement. "Rules for thee but not for me" kinda treatment. Not necessarily a huge conspiracy, just nobody really paying attention. I know this because I was part of one of those curation guilds for a few years.