Your question is painfully real for many of us. Like you I have shunned bots because of a sense that innate quality (good) should prevail. Sadly we've never seen this happen throughout history on any scale.
It seems the best we can hope for is that those kind ones currently in power (benign whales, bots or not) will fight our battle against the greedy, self-serving whales (often a bot consortium!)
Maybe the one thing we smaller fry could do is give (proxy) our witness vote for those who are the benign whales. I suggest that someone with more experience than me compile a list of altruistic witnesses. You mention @aggroed and he's voting @minnowsupport. Another great post is by @lukestokes here. My conundrum is that I'm too new to know all the players so can't cast an informed vote. I'm betting I'm in the majority. Help!
I feel your pain, man! Becoming fully aware in the platform enough to actually cast my vote in an intelligent manner is something that happened only recently.
The good news is that it happens pretty organically as you read articles and participate in discussions. You'll get a better and better sense of who is legit and who isn't.
For my own part, @jesta (really awesome developer behind Steem Stats and ChainBB) and @roelandp (guy who organizes Steemfest) are among my favorites at the moment, but I get the sense that in six months I'll have an even better sense of who to vote for.
Thanks for the encouragement and info on the others.