Actually, even if many many minnows think a post is valuable, it's nothing to a whale vote. I have posts with 70+ upvotes and plenty of comments - $5. I have a post with 5 upvotes but one is a whale - $200. Then of course it starts trending and a bunch more upvotes happen. But it's obvious (no comments) that it's people just chasing curation rewards.
Sad really.