Well, as soon as I realized that my ability to benefit the posters of content I found useful depended on my SP, I cranked the slider over to 100%, where it remains today, and simply retained every bit of it as voting power.
Now, I haven't much. I couldn't pay rent, for example, if I wanted to, and I might, if I could. However I am working elsewhere, and as long as that remains the case, I probably will not remove any SP, for curation, and now, as insurance in the event of flagging.
And, despite my initial ignorance and misinterpretation of such avowals of felicity on Steemit as mere sucking up for money, I am myself seeing that there is much more to this community.
I some time ago abandoned facebook, etc. due to platform issues and the vapidity of content, again by design in the platform. There are things that could be improved about Steemit, no doubt, but it seems the data harvesting, censorship, and propaganda that have been incorporated into facebook simply aren't here.
Getting stomped on by an irritated whale is vastly preferable to swimming in a sea of corrosive propaganda, imho.
Well said.