I couldn't agree more. Paradox of this phenomenon for me is, "while I think of these ettiquetes as common sense, not following of them seems to be common practice". I believe it has to so a lot with class difference are so high, whales don't really care about sharing love, majority behaves in way that is financially most beneficial for them, which ultimately creates despiration among minnows.
One wonders the success is in followers, not realizing those followers won't give damn about your posts, and will probably unfollow first chance they get. Leaving a commnet without an upvote is the most annoying in my opinion. Why even bother saying positive stuff in comments, when your actions speak otherwise?
To be fair, I don't think it's so much that the whales don't care about sharing love, it's more that the whales are kind of set in following their friends, just like any other human beings tend to be. In order to reach out beyond your normal circles, you have to be intentional about it, and whales (along with most humans) tend to not be intentional about it. I've posted about this in previous articles--you can take a look if you're curious. And as far as followers go, I do follow people, but I'm not consistent about going through my feed so I have to admit a follow from me in and of itself isn't all that valuable. These days I rely pretty heavily on automatic voting once I decide I want to support someone's content.
your reasoning makes total sense, I will read your previous posts. Sounds interesting.