look at the reward pool rapes done by whales on hot chicks, friends, family, gf, etc. The only way to get rid of this mess is by removing the trending, promoted and hot pages. only then genuine posts will get good upvotes. since iv joined steemit, 95% of the time the top trending posts are all almost on same topics. Basically if ur not a hot chick or not a programmer or not related to whales or not a famous youtuber, u dont get anything for your posts, no matter howmuch you have worked hard on it.