I agree with your main point. Most of the comments on my posts are pointless "good job please follow" type comments fishing for votes, where it is clear that the poster never read my post. I have intentionally refrained from criticising posts that I know are spewing false information to avoid a flag (a very bad anti-flouride post I saw months ago comes to mind). The result is a very positive but somewhat fake environment where people don't criticize enough. Don't get me wrong, this is still way better than cancerous Facebook, but I'd like to see us reach a happy middle ground between current Steemit (where there is almost nothing negative even when it is desparetly needed) and Reddit (where more opinions are present but the top comments are always low effort sarcasm or jokes).

And also, have you seen the trending page? It's almost embarrassing to show new people the platform and reveal the posts that get the most upvotes. And NO, I'm not being one of those pessimistic motherfuckers saying to hell with everything, what I'm saying is that this platform as it is in its current state supports a community where people are walking on glass, trying not to step on anybody's toes.

I mean just see the ridiculous Haejin posts for an example. His 'analysis' of drawing random lines of graphs is almost always either wrong or so vague that it can't be wrong ("it could go up or down" but not in those words). It should be obvious by now that following his advice is as good as following the advice of a first grader coloring inside the lines on a Bitcoin plot with a crayon. And yet, with the exception of the angry individuals flagging him, most of his comment pages are full of people praising his 'analysis' and thanking him for his work. And why do these masses do this? To get upvotes, and maybe a follower for their positivity. But by supporting someone who encourages people to essentially gamble on worthless predictions, we make Steem look bad as a whole and clutter the Trending page with more garbage.

And then we have the ridiculous low effort posts upvoted to hundreds of dollars (or worse during the bull run) by bots with hundreds of worthless comments refusing to call out the author, because they want tiny amounts of money from a vote. This is exacerbated by the endless "How to succeed on Steem" posts that encourage commenting on every post, resulting in hoards of people writing stupid but vaguely positive comments on posts they never even read.

On the other hand, you yourself used upvote bots to reach the front page. I get it, they're tempting. I've used them a few times myself on a much smaller scale (although I regret that). But being able to upvote a post to hundreds of dollars is the reason that the trending page is mostly trash. So I see that as a bit of hypocrisy on your part - you are contributing to the problem. And it's my fault, too, for using them in the past and more recently delegating Steem for dividends to one.

But overall I think this post is a good thing. There is a little too much of a circlejerk on Steem - at least on the trending page that is, it gets better in smaller communities.