Well I hear what you're saying, but being on this trail doesn't stop me from curating. It just does some curating automatically. I still curate my favorite authors, and if I see something new I like I upvote it. That and following this trail are not mutually exclusive. There is a limit to how much you can curate as you need to keep your VP above 85%, but that's really not an issue for me, maybe it would be for some and in that case I'd say it's not for that user.

But you're predicating this argument on the assumption that if people weren't following this trail they'd be doing a lot more manual curation which I'd argue is probably not the case, and you're assuming that being on the trail means you're not curating which as I just mentioned is also not the case.

Most of my friends on here I automatically upvote anyway. I read their posts, but if I happen to miss one, I still want to support them anyway, because the reality of the way this system works is that most people aren't searching and finding lots of new content, they make friends and support the person, not the post.

You could argue that more people should, but I'd say that's more of a design problem, since there are no communities and no functional search, finding new content isn't something the vast majority of people have a lot of time to dedicate to.

My philosophy is more about supporting people vs supporting content. If someone is a real person and is posting some real content ie not spam, I don't mind supporting that person. I want the steem to go to the people who want to be here and are invested in the platform. Two things this trail incentivises.