I resteemed this, because even though I haven't been here long I've noticed this is less a meritocracy and more a plutocracy.

I'm a professional artist since more than 30 years, also a workaholic, so I work a lot, even in my spare time. I have around 15,000 followers on a couple different pages on FB, 7000 on ArtStation, I've been on DeviantArt for 11 years, CGTalk for longer. You can google my name and check out my images. :)
I post here, I get a few cents, I search Trending Art and see mostly mediocre amateur stuff that keeps getting 100$ or more. Nothing bad about mediocre amateur art, mind you.

At first I couldn't understand the discrepancy, then I realized the system is easy to game for coders and/or rich people. I'm neither, so there it is. Some kind of non-gameable merit system in conjunction to the existing one would be good imo.