Wow. You have covered a TON of ground here! First, it really makes my heart swell to read what you wrote about my commenting. I try hard to leave honest and thoughtful comments and it is really nice to read that I hit the mark and provided you with nourishing food for thought. Curie certainly cannot be the solution alone. It is unfortunate that the curation reward mechanic on this platform is so weak, and the profit from delegating voting power to a vote seller so much greater. But there are people out there trying hard to keep human engagement alive! Check out @abh12345's curation league (which, full disclosure, I sponsor half the prizes for: https://steemit.com/engagement/@abh12345/the-curation-and-engagement-leagues-bounties-available-sponsored-by-carlgnash-and-paulag) as an example of an initiative designed to encourage people to actually interact and comment. Curating for engagement is actually a very effective way to grow and generate engagement on your posting as a new user - what this means is, looking for other posting that resonates, and leaving a thoughtful comment. You may not have a large upvote to reward someone, but as you note, a good comment can be even more valuable! When I started actively curating and commenting on posting outside of the small circle of friends I had made, my follower count and incoming engagement in form of comments on my own posting both skyrocketed. Now when I browse Steem, I look for users who are leaving good comments on other author's posting, and then I make a point to follow them and visit their own posting to leave a small reward and my own comment. Good luck as you continue your own posting journey here and I hope you are able to build up an engaged following. You are obviously a thinker and we need more of that here :)
Much love - Carl
I agree, this is a long journey and something of an uphill battle for now but I'm determined to continue to find some real engagement here. I'm really happy that you and Curie have shown me a path forward and have given me valuable advice for continuing to grow my profile and provide value to the Steemit platform and- more importantly- its users.
You're doing great work.