Rather, you SOCIALIZE. You bring a token gift. You introduce yourself one on one whenever you can. You LISTEN a lot. You mingle. You compliment (upvote) and comment on OTHER'S conversations. In short, you slowly endear yourself to the community and befriend people.
Actually, from a game theory point of view, it makes no sense to upvote whales or dolphins because it gives them more power. Instead you should socialise with fellow minnows to make an alliance to break the power of the whales. We're already starting to see this happen. See the following for why this makes sense:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@teatree/steemit-is-all-about-game-theory
If you look close the whales go around upvoting each other comment they posts.... they are gaming it for sure...shame...these friends and pals of the dev team are stinking up the joint...I was threaten by a whale about down voting something... here's the link to what he wrote me when he sent a penny to my account with a note..
https://steemit.com/whalebullying/@poias/who-is-the-mini-whale-tuck-fheman-why-is-does-he-threaten-minnows-flag-bully-alert