@markgatx Hi man, yeah it can be a steep learning curve in the start for sure. I find it so fascinating on many levels to watch as this mini-verse unfolds and evolves. The concepts of free market, free world libertarian-ism are truly and rigorously tested here, and that to me is a joy to see.

Truly as I see it yes, mass adoption is going to dwarf even the rewards of these little whale circle jerking antics, even to scale up to a single 10% of say fakebook market cap would truly make a significant gain in the wallets of every early adopter here. You and I included, as I see it these are still yet very early days for STEEM as a currency and this platform too. We certainly could and should look forward to the upcoming forks.

Until then my only advice to fellow n00bs as we all are that's no diss, is keep creating quality content. Don't mind none to the spam (unless you have the skill set and passion for that) there are highly efficient and smart Steemians already cracking away on that. These whales are just doing their thing and there are many what I call white hat whales who are not involved in the shenanigans described above.

The best thing I feel about what we have here is that it's all transparent and there's no hiding anything on the blockchain. So we all know and can see what's going on as long as we connect and embrace the community aspect. This is a social media platform after all, that being said if you have yet to drop the fakebook habit. I too am only a mild social user at the moment, then please feel free to join our steemit mastermind group.

We're all fairly new there and it's a small group, we discuss communal steemit topics and you might find some useful information in the discussion threads to help you settle in.