damn.
Though I have to admit the steemwhales can all learn a bit from the community as the community can learn from them, you do have some damn good points. At least I can say that although I do little things like "fuzzbombs" where I upvote lists of people who are participating in conversation, I definitely upvote a cute girl doing makeup and other things for precisely the reason you say---they get eyeballs which means they bring eyeballs here. And yep, that does mean everyone who thinks they are getting the short end of the stick actually does benefit from the people she brings.

However I will take it one step further and say that we need to help people realize that all the people in their networks (irl or on the inet) have great value and if they all join because of you and upvote your content (that you wouldn't get paid for at all by other social media btw), you all will get paid.

At first it is not much, but one thing I will assure you is that in the 2+ years that most steemwhales have spent (not even talking about out of pocket expenses) making the tech available, each person who joins steemit today could at the very least become a formidable great white (not to mention an army of great whites by their sides).

The power is in your network as much as it is in your content. Steemit actually enables you to empower yourself by empowering others who trust and value you. Name another social network that can do that!

@johnsmith, you will likely do very well here and I don't say that because some might think you are ass kissing. I am saying it because you seem intent on stubbornly producing good content. (By which I mean I laughed a good bit and ended up realizing that one point you made was salient--keep trying and as more users come we will build more strength together).

I cannot speak for all whales, because I am kind of a baby whale I suppose, but I will say that I am very interested at this stage in helping upvote projects that help steem. So if anyone who is upset thinks they have solutions lets talk! If not--go back to facebook people, where you will never get paid anything but will be censored and seen as a useless idiot for Zuck to suck on.
;)