I so commiserate. I finally gave up on SteemFollower because it was taking way too long to find even five worthy new posts to upvote.
I do still believe in Steemit as a concept, and powered up this past week as a mental commitment to myself, so I'll still be around. And Marek is (mostly) over being sick, so I'll have more time to curate, and actually read your posts again, which I've missed!
But yes, I'm looking at other options as well, because I'm a writer, and I want what I write to actually be read. Which it is, more and more, but still, it gets old seeing the crap posts make hundreds for zero work, when the post I worked my ass off on for hours does nothing.
Yeah, I am taking a week or two off. I really have some serious choices to make... I am NOT getting more readers, I have the same handful of people who reply and I do not want to spend MORE time over in discord (I end up in tears there WAY TOO OFTEN) to try to earn a few more pennies. It is not about money for me, yet having the money involved makes me feel like I have "no value" by comparison... I do not want that comparison in my face on a daily basis. It is not accurate.
I completely understand, and have felt the same way more than once. And I agree, it's a bogus comparison, and I know first hand that it's hard not to take it personally.
It is disheartening when I tell Marek I made another post, and his comment is something to the effect of, "Oh great, another 31 cents." Yeah. That.
But I do have faith in the people I've met on this platform, many of whom are actively working on a way to make the system fairer, and to hide the crap posts from our feeds. And, hopefully, to ban repeat plagiarizers.
And I was VERY heartened this morning to read an article in Vanity Fair about Sir Timothy Berners-Lee, who invented the World Wide Web in 1989, and is now actively working with his foundation to re-centralize the internet as we know it, to return control of personal information back to individuals, and to make it harder for governments and corporations to spy on us 24/7.
His project's name is "Solid," and his foundation's website is www.w3.org, if you're interested. I plan to get involved in whatever ways I can.
Meanwhile, if you do ultimately decide to switch platforms, please give me a way to contact you. I consider you a friend, and would hate to lose contact, as I'd love to meet you face to face one of these days. ;-)