Thanks @dreemit for your thoughtful reply!

I get it, about "visiting everyone." Even though we both follow far fewer people than follow us... it's at times a daunting endeavor. I'm "in process" of setting up a series of bookmark folders that hopefully will enable me to keep up more readily... that said, publishing my own posts AND writing meaningful comments on 200+ posts a day sounds more like a full-time job than a "pastime" to me.

I finally... after about five months or so (been here about 6 1/2 months in total) came to define the rewards as "a nice fringe benefit" for publishing blog posts. I've published thousands of blog posts in the course of 25-odd years online, most of them without a penny... some earning me a glorious 25 cents in Google Adsense revenue; a tiny handful earning "real" money; my point here being that having any EXPECTATIONS of rewards leads to disappointment... and, frankly, means "I'm doing it wrong."

Sorry, that was my sideways ramble.

Bottom line is that I really like the Steemit community, and I like the quality of content and the level of engagement and intelligence I encounter here. To which end I find myself invested not in earning rewards so much as in the process of helping to ensure there will still be a thriving community here for us, next year, and in 2020, and in 2025. Absolutely, I enjoy being compensated for writing... but that's a consequence of contributing, not a front-loaded expectation.

I have no doubt about what I'd want as an investor. And a sea of shit posts is not it.

And that, right there, sums up why I approach Steemit the way I do. How do I make this venue attractive to MYSELF, as an investor.

Pretty simple. And really... quite selfish, too. In a way...