Sure there might be a bit of a whale circle jerk going on + large self votes from others. As many as there is doing things the community may frown upon, there is as many taking part in so many initiatives to help smaller users gain some ground and grow. It's their sp to do what they please anyway. Sure it sucks to see half ass post gain hundreds but noting about life is fair anyway, why would steemit differ? That being said, I don't think there is a whale problem per say, I suspect it's the way the platform was advertised as in make 100's of $ a day writing on steemit , I would say false advertisement and expectations. As much as it brings people in , soon they realized they have been duped and lucky if they can make 10 cents. Maybe advertising steemit for what it really is, a social experiment would go a long way into getting users that have lower expectation and will treat it for what it is and more likely to stay.

Maybe not all but a lot of the "whale problem whiners" post a shitty photo with hardly any words and think they deserve to be on the trending page. Part of that is the image bid-bots create by upvoting that sort of shitpost into oblivion until someone notices and blacklist them. After all it's easier to whine than to look in the mirror and look if there is something that could be improved in our posts.

I never had expectations of steemit other than using social media with a bonus. I post my photos on FB and get F all for them, it doesn't stop me from posting them there. Now on steemit, if I make 10 cents for a post well, it's 10 cents I wouldn't have earned on fb! Over the last year I have slowly upgraded to minnow either way still growing, that's the main part. Steemit isn't a paycheck, it isn't going to solve world hunger or magically lift everyone out of poverty tomorrow. The key is perseverence. The 28 k or so ppl that have left are missing out big time and it is petty on the other hand, it leaves more of the reward pool for those who care, the other 12 k that stayed for the fun regardless of rewards being low, in the end, if it goes mainstream and becomes the next hot social media platform those 12 k will be happy they stayed.