Curation has always been encouraged on Steemit, and there are a lot of accounts that do it quite well, including @ocd. I wouldn't discover a lot of n00bs were it not for these curation posts. @curie is another one with a HUGE curation vote along with it, but your post does get linked in one of their posts. It's designed to help. @chiefmappster has been great to help new Steemians on the platform, and in fact, he basically jumped right in and started helping n00bs from the beginning when he was also a n00b. He has good intentions to help people connect with others, and is doing it quite well.
Many users simply don't pay attention to resteems, and a lot of users keep re-steeming to a minimum as it buries their own content, but by taking a few moments out to direct people to awesome content is designed to help new users, not hurt them.
I have a series called Cool Stuff Curation for this purpose, and it has helped a number of people connect with cool blogs they wouldn't have otherwise found.
Creating an entire account where you make over $100 each day from other people's content is sketchy to me. Where are those funds going? In their pockets. Curation is rewarded on Steemit through resteeming. Profiting off others content without giving them any of the money you earn is unethical in my opinion. I have managed to build followers without this kind of "help" and over time, your quality posts will earn money. That account never resteems, never posts anything of their own... People always want to skip the whole "doing the work" thing. Users who want to make tons of money immediately from mediocre content, and users that make money off of others are both doing this. I don't see how this helps people. Learning how to improve content, engage authentically, and RESTEEMING people's content so they get MONEY for what they created is what Steemit was built for. I am not making judgements on who these people are, but as marketing and content strategist, even if not intentionally, this seems exploitative to me. If this was all about giving back, the funds earned from this "curation" concept would go somehow TOWARDS the people who make the account possible.
I appreciate your opinion however and how it adds to this conversation.
That's what Curation Guilds do, and they have a lot of whale support behind them. Also, many higher-reputation users (including myself) consult those guilds almost exclusively for new, vetted, high-quality content.
I just hope this doesn't isolate you from those fields of vision, because those folks really are out to help you (I promise those new followers pay off...I've been here since last October and have seen it personally, but it does take time. Those votes do keep giving.) and they have lots of whale support and Steem Power on their side to do it.
In this particular example, maybe he just didn't explain very well (or at all) what the scope of this project was. He also said they resteem posts, but I do not see any of that on their page. And ultimately, his tone of that asking was a "formality" also rubbed me the wrong way. As I said in my post, there are legitimate concepts that do actually help noobs, and I support them. But without better answers and explanations, this particular outreach felt wrong to me. I will keep an open mind in the future, if it makes sense to me. Thank you!