Yours is a story we hear over and over. Although it's great content - you're a minnow and therein lays the problem. Some people will take the moral high ground and insist they're not in this for the rewards just to post content and stimulate debate ....... really! if you monitor a posting by a whale you'll notice on occasions it isn't even original content but the up votes go stratospheric. Why? because it's not about the content it's about riding on the coat tails of a whale for curation awards.... it's bullshit ..... if you can't beat them then join them!
LOL! Yeah I could just try to join the dash for cash, but we minnows don't stand to earn much from curating. I think I barely made a cent from that so far. Things are just too skewed at the moment, a bit like society (bit of politics!)