You would actually be surprised. Actually there are, especially in well established communities like science, gardening and writting :)

I do believe that, but those are not the ones I'm aiming at with bids. They will find good content anyway, for me it's important to attract people outside of those established communities as well ;)

Engaging more with the communities that actually interest you are where you will make 99 % of your real gains.

Agreed and I am already doing this. But to get a community, you need to be visible. People need to know, you exist, etc. You get my point^^ The guy with the top comment was not engaging with his community, as you said, and I agree with you, that ignoring meaningful comments is a bad idea.

Take for example some of your latest posts. The ones that are more succesful are the ones that have been supported by Steemstem. We never check the "hot" page. We always go for the "new" and check all posts one by one. Using a bot or not made no difference in one of the curators picking you up. And if your post had a huge bot upvote chances are we would have given you a smaller vote and thus you would have made a smaller profit. We like to keep things fair :)

Trust me, I am always really grateful for the Steemstem-support. But that's a kind of support, I cannot always rely on. Sure, producing quality drastically increases the chance to get picked, but still it might not be always the case and without help, posts can easily get lost.

Regarding your last sentences: You could look at things like this: If you give me a smaller vote, because I used a bot, that's fine by me, this will leave more VP for the people who can't afford or don't want to use bots ;)
As I said: I don't need to make much out of my bids, they are a way of investment to increase the growth.
I can absolutely understand your point, that bots can be harmful if abused, especially if they are pushing bullshit and spam. I just think, that, like always in life, things are not black and white :)