Decentralisation, can't expect everything to be pleasing :) Well i'm right with you that some high SP users should delegate to accounts that can curate well, but in any case it's their vote. I think there are more doing good filling up the long tail of the distribution. Popularity happens in any networks, even in the dictionary where 100 words out of millions get used 95% of the time. It's addressed in Steem's whitepaper. That said, if whales bought mining rigs for Ethereum or Bitcoin instead of SP, they'd effectively just be voting for themselves all the time. Steem breaks out of that and gives anyone the option to support accounts other than themselves that add to the platform. Hmm.. well there's no real club per se, unless stated, otherwise it's simply perception. But sure, investors tend to band together, because of similar interests and are risking together in an investment.
Edit: about your project, any post on it? anyway, I'd personally just do it if i'm going to do it anyway. If people like it , then awesome. I guess it's just the same anywhere, need to hustle. Here with SP i can vote on people who shares my music , etc. There's plenty of use case for SP..