There have been numerous critical posts that have gotten votes from (a few) whales. It mostly depends on them being well-written and thoughtful.

I respectfully disagree. For the time I've been here which is merely a month, I have scanned the trending page every day desperately looking for others, like myself, that, unlike myself, had the influence to break in to the trending levels. While surely there are some posts that will get some votes from some whales, until recently, it is rare to see something critical make a significant reward. Numerous is an exaggeration.

And as far as well-written and thoughtful, I dare say that the recent posts with critical commentary are barely more than rants that hit the right nerve because many users are simply fed up with being ignored, insulted and marginalized for daring to have different opinions.

I do agree that a well-written and thoughtful critical post can get far more votes than a positive one that is poor quality. It is far more likely that a post that is positive, of the same quality as a critical post, will get rewarded by more whales.

Getting merely the votes of 100 non-whales isn't the difficulty, because they don't dictate the direction of the platform nearly to the same level of the whales. It's getting enough whales to upvote so that it gets to trend and get seen by more users.

Anyway, we can agree to disagree on this matter. What we can agree upon, I assume, and applaud is that there is vibrant discussion going on in the comments and it's been overwhelmingly civil. This bodes well for the platform and gives those of us that are not here to earn a living some hope for the future of Steemit.

We are sailing in the right direction.

And thanks for having these discussions over the last few weeks. I value your opinion on these matters whether we agree or disagree in whole or in part.

Cheers