Yeah man totally agree. I was telling someone just yesterday that the reason I joined Steemit back in February was because I wanted to engage with a crypto crowd BLOGGING... sharing original content was my goal.
Now, people are advertising Steem as a platform where you "blog and GET PAID." So, of course people are just going to come here to make money. These MONEY FIRST people are the people to aggressively upvote themselves.
I agree that the stigma against flagging has to be broken. However, I don't see this being a long term solution. I think a long term solution is forcing people to really earn their upvote... this used to be a thing and it wasn't an issue before.
But anyway I am just rambling now. Great post! Resteemed.
Yeah, it's great being paid and it's awesome that we can make this all happen, but it's super shitty when people abuse it. I like the idea of us all collectively, irrespective of our stake, trying to find a balance. People could also just comment in reply to shit-posts with something like "someone should flag this for X reason," and someone else with more stake could swoop in the save the day. I understand some smaller stake holders want to focus on building themselves and spreading rewards around VS flagging.
But yeah fully agreed, the stigma needs to die and people need to quit being babies about it. It's like not voting in an actually FAIR election. Not participating makes you at fault for the detriment of the greater good.