Big whales mostly do not have time to come on steemit and read shitty blog posts all day. So they use a software/site to automatically vote for them.

So sometimes they will come on steemit and try find a new author they like and then add them to their 'list' ..

Everyone on their list automatically will get an upvote from them for EVERY POST . Hence why some really bad content can still get over $100 while most of us get way less..

Watch my most recent post. it is at $0.45 cents but in a few min it will get a vote from 'croedfundedwhale' and go up $1.. How do I know this? Because I am on that whales curation list.