In most media, people subscribe to the individuals they believe in or from whom they've obtained value in one form or another.

So while the fundamental idea behind Steem of allowing the best content to surface to the top does rest on the assumption that all content will be reviewed as independent candidates for an upvote, it is not how it plays out anywhere else on the web nor currently on steemit. (I mean, plenty of people write clever tweets or make good looking pictures on instagram every day, but if they haven't done the tough walk of building and nurturing an audience, they still don't get any love).

What I would wish for was the option of subscribing to people on steemit. Perhaps I would want to subscribe to a great curator who I believe does an excellent job curating content I want to see, and then obtain a feed influenced by what the curators I subscribe to have voted on in the past 24 hours. Or maybe I'll want the opportunity to subscribe to a creator and give their content higher priority in my feed which tends to get flooded by resteems and posts from all the people I follow.

In any case, the idea of following and rewarding the creator more so than the creation makes sense to me.