I do understand the desire for popular witnesses. I only hope I can convince you that witness are not here to be popular, they are here to ensure the security of the network.

I do upvote minnows quite often! I'm a huge supporter in the Japanese community particularly. Ask people like Hive account@knozaki2015 or Hive account@kinakomochi how much I've helped support the Hive account@steemit-jp community with curation tools :)