When I started in Steemit I had a very vocal anti bot stance and through time had softened my stance on this as I have been using them.

I agree with you though on reputation. I no longer get awed by someone that has 60+ reputation and the highest reputation account we have in Steem currently haijen was achieved by a circle jerk and self-upvoting so clearly reputation is worthless.

The real power is on Steem power and you can either get a ton load of money and power up or try to get the occasional curie or OCD vote.

Most of the time you will need to wait 3 weeks to a month before you are eligible again except for the smaller community curie vote.

I have seen that so many time posts that have more than 200 in value and you realize you stumbled into a bid bot graveyard of a post full of just comments from bots saying it has been upvoted. Welcome to a golden shit post.

The one or two comments made by a human may be done in hoping that they wold be given an upvote not knowing the person barely has SP since everything is just paid to bots or cashed out. There is absolutely no intention to curate or be part of a community.

I fee you for delegations because it now costs an arm and a leg to rent out. I know because I rent delegations as well to get me to the SP i currently use to curate good posts and comments.