Just a fun (or maybe we could use another adjective if we wanted) fact to add to the conversation...The largest payout ever on a steemit post was a little over $30,000 and it was last fall. It was a make-up tutorial by some girl who earned close to 100k in a few months and then took the money and ran. The account is almost all the way powered down now and hasn't been active in about 7 months.
I'd guess there weren't many women on here the first few months and the men, being what we are, piled on the upvotes on that post. The girl and her friend who joined a little later raked it in and then left.
They also did "fundraisers" for charitable causes but I'm skeptical that the money ever reached its stated destination.
I like looking at good looking women just as much as the next guy but I don't usually vote for them just because of looks. I have a beautiful wife who posts here and I like upvoting her stuff and I have another female friend who I upvote her posts too (she's good looking too but that's not why i vote for her content).
And yes it is frustrating to spend an hour or two on a well written and well thought out post and get very little off of it. It's kind of surprising and counterintuitive at times which ones of my posts get good rewards. My best payout ever was a summary of my experience as a newbie here and it got like $70. It seems like when I blog and don't really do so thinking about "how can I maximize my payout", I tend to get surprised with the reward amount.
It is disheartening to see someone post something that takes them all of 3 minutes to create and then get $500 in rewards. @jerrybanfield did a post about the top 50 or 100 users and the % of their votes that they allocate to themselves and it was pretty amazing. Generally most whales self vote between 20 and 80% of the time.
I'm not gonna pass judgment but I found it pretty shocking.