This post screams "Self-centeredness" and "Entitlement mentality".

I'm going to have to disagree with you there. What @lily-da-vine and many others have been doing since last summer is exactly what one would expect a successful blogger to do. Over that time, she has gained a large following, including some followers with a larger stake. These people vote on her posts, presumably because they enjoy the content or want to reward her for her efforts.

This past weekend, @lily-da-vine and those many other bloggers who have been doing exactly what successful bloggers should be doing and who have been doing exactly what everyone on this platform would tell others that they should be doing - networking and growing their audience, to include larger stakeholders - have been explicitly denied the very support from their usual following. And this was done explicitly for the purpose of "giving more rewards/influence to those who don't get/have them."

It has nothing to do with "self-centeredness" or "entitlement mentality" for those who have been building their brand/reputation/followings for many months. Just because their following happens to include larger stakeholders is not a reason to deny them the votes of those larger stakeholders.

This is a stake-based system.

The STEEM blockchain operates according to DPoS - Delegated Proof of Stake. The Steemit blogging platform allocates rewards based on stake-weighted voting. That's what it is. If you're not OK with this concept, then STEEM/Steemit is not for you (not you specifically, "you" as in "anyone who this applies to").

Those people who do not have followings or larger stakeholders within their followings and continually demand higher rewards are actually the ones who are acting "entitled." This is social media and this is a stake-weighted platform. If you want more rewards, then you need to build a following with higher-stake users.

That being said - yes, we are pretty much all in agreement that the n^2 rewards curve needs to be adjusted to a more linear algorithm. And yes, we are all very aware of the distribution of stake issue due to the early mining. The code can be adjusted for the former, but not for the latter. If we want better distribution, then we need those users with the largest stake to either power down, redistribute on their own, or attract many more users who are willing to buy STEEM and power it up.

What is not going to work is an attempt by a few "power users" to dictate who is allowed to earn and who isn't, and which investors are allowed to influence and which ones are not. And when this attempted control over rewards is done in the way that it has been over the last several days, it's only going to serve as a signal for other potential bloggers (who are actually very good at what they do) to stay away from this platform. It will also tell investors who are looking to buy large amounts of STEEM in order to have a larger share of influence in the system to stay away from this platform.

Just because you got into the good books of some whales (and they are way below 100 in number) doesn't mean everything was going fine for the other tens of thousands of users out there.

Nobody has ever claimed that "everything is going fine." And there certainly aren't "tens of thousands of users" - let alone that many active ones. But this line alone is what's most telling about many of the complaints:

Just because you got into the good books of some whales...

This is the "entitlement mentality." That you or any other user ought to be in those same "books" or that @lily-da-vine and others only happened to get lucky is exactly what's wrong with this user base and it's precisely the problem with this current "experiment." If someone is receiving votes from a whale, then we must assume that at least at some point, the whale in question found the work to be valuable/enjoyable and/or wanted to support the user. And guess what - they can support them as much as they want. In fact, they can only support that one person if they wanted to. They could upvote every blog post and comment and they can even automate it if they desire.

That's what your stake means. Do what you want with it. If you want more people with more stake to vote for you, then attract them as readers and voters of your content. We're all operating under the same rules - whether those rules are for the blockchain or for social media "popularity." Outside of abuse, there's no reason to expect anything different or "unfair" about how things work here.

If you think leaving is the best answer to this, so be it. You have all the right to make that choice.

Ditto to you. And if you'd like to stay, please remember how stake works on this site.