Based upon my own experience, having been on Steem since July 2016 and from someone coming from the freelancer world, Steem was incredible in terms of money.
I was used to put in hours of effort to deliver high quality services to my customers. I did that for years. When I suddenly stumbled upon Steem, and I gave it a try, I literally hit a goldmine. I earned a months salary with less than a handful of posts, and that was obviously an amazing experience. It was easier than my work, even for a not-so-talented-writer like myself.
I quickly realized what an amazing chance I had to change my life in various ways, but I didn't give in to all the asslicking of whales. I noticed the almost sick attention the rich guys got, just because how deep their pockets were, and I wasn't trying to squeeze them for upvotes. Many of the users I brought to Steem did things differently. They relied on the "get rich quick" method, so they tried to get recognition and earn upvotes from whales and dolphins. They ignored lesser accounts entirely and the main focus were to comment on whale-content. I can also say that I have probably brought in hundreds of people in total through my various marketing campaigns and/or due to how I have been promoting Steem.
I did things differently. I tried to educate, motivate and inspire people around me. I focused on lesser accounts and I co-launched curation projects with just a fraction of the power as bigger, better, more known users had. We tried to encourage people, we literally convinced people to stay even though there were about to leave.
We had great results and it was fun. We didn't earn, we weren't selfish. We did our best to give others as much as possible. We believed that a stronger middle class, or that a more sturdy foundation would benefit the entire community. - Our efforts weren't noticed by the "big guys". We were to small or to unknown.
The "circlejerk"-times were the main focus and that started due to selfishness. Why would people give up on their steady income only to support lesser, pretty much unknown accounts that never got any major recognition? - It was obviously a better choice for people to continue in the same route as before.
Now, I know that this isn't that related to your questions in your posts, but I truly believe that the actual mindset is wrong to begin with. Or that is has been wrong. I believe more in Hive than in Steem. I think that many of the "big guys" noticed were Steem failed and I think Hive will be more successful in the long haul.
That being said, selfishness will never vanish. Especially not when it is rewarded. Those with power will be the most famous or the most "interesting" people to follow, because "the average people" follows money.
Steem stopped being fun when the audience stopped caring about the content. I could still interact with my audience when I was able to reward them something for their comments. It wasn't worth much, but it was a "token of appreciation" when they made a comment. People continued to comment and it was still fun to interact and comment on content. The engagement were still there, to some extent.
I have said this many times before, the key is to figure out how a random, average Facebook or Instagram user can use Hive to share content without giving up the second they realize that they won't make hundreds or thousands of dollars.
Rewards should go to content instead of the person behind it...