All sounds very decentralized.
Back then, your success on STEEM was easy if you grinded. You would write your post, upload it and pay 1 HIVE for an upvote yielding 1.2 HIVE after the curation split. Back then post rewards were 70% to Authors and 30% to curators. Next week, you'd pay 1.2 HIVE and get a 1.4 HIVE yield, the same again week after week.
As you say, it's more about kissing the ass of some pleb that is a minion for a whale.