Hi @randr10 I also recently popped up on @botreporter, @bycoleman post about trending articles that haven't got there by using bidbots and in that case my short story had been found by another curie curator and that is the only reason I was there. This is the sad fact that it's the only way I will get there as well, despite having had my fiction + poetry published in magazines etc. I am seriously considering not posting short stories to steemit until after I have submitted them elsewhere and had a response from the publication, as I lose first publishing rights when I post to steemit. The truth of the matter is that less dolphins/whales around means less chance of any type of meaningful reward based on quality unless @ocd or @curie find you (both amazing curation communities who I can't praise enough). This is mainly the fault of bidbots as, I can only assume, whales/dolphins delegate away the bulk of there SP when they're not actively producing content and a lot of them are circle jerking there way to a tidy profit even when they are producing content. I'm not going to mention any names as I would be risking a flagging just for pointing out the truth but I have studied a few of these types of circle-jerkers and often they produce less than quality content while people spending hours producing good interesting stuff are left out in the cold simply cause thay don't have the SP to offer anything to these greedy minded people. Ha ha, anyway I've gone on a rant again ;-)