"Nor do I ever have any desire to read anything I would have otherwise not read just so that some cunt will pay me in either attention or upvotes."

You have hit the nail on the head. I would say though, that while this is the central philosophy of SteemIt, it is also what makes it fun - in a way.

What I find difficult is the pretentiousness of it all. We even have people programming bots to punish people for self upvoting their own comments, whilst these people will form their own circles that will upvote each other's comments to oblivion.

I know that this is not what you are getting at, and maybe you are on the opposite side of my argument in this matter, but my point is that there is a lot going on on SteemIt that belongs to the control of dominating or sociopathic behavior.