The issue is that even good articles are hidden under whales... So sometimes I find very clever things and they'll remain unkown...

This problem is the same as every social network. Most of the famous user, started with bad value content, or clickbait articles, and now they are known, they can start the good value content.
And that's is boring because it's something very hard to solve and it seems there is no solution to fix this "human" issue...

The key is to be steady, and write good quality content regularly, but it's generally really hard to compete with whales already in place, and a lot of people are discouraged