One of the frustrating aspects of steem(it) indeed. When I made my introduction post on steemit I knew close to nothing about the monetary aspect and I didn't really care. From the replies on that post I, as a technicaly, guy quickly learned there was more than just content. I stared learning about bots, flag wars, whale (non) behavior, witnesses, shit content, ...

My current conclusion is: where money plays a role there will be leeches.
Your post is about the small leeches trying to suck out little money but as you most probably know there are those at a bigger scale as well. The thing is, it's easier to be a small leech than it is to be a big one and thus we have a feeling to be flooded by these smaller ones. But maybe the bigger ones are a bigger threat.

the more shit “upvote me” comments I see, the more I wanna disengage from Steemit altogether, Power Down, reallocate my investment in professional communities holding themselves to higher standards.

I started following your blog only recently because it talks about subjects that interest me (well mostly, of course not every post) and because you present it in a refreshing way. Lot's of text but it reads so smooth.
I'm sure a lot of people have learned a lot from your writings and I think it would be a pity to loose you here.

I don't have the same level of SP and thus I won't be attracting as much leeches. For a while I flagged them but that did no good to nobody and I quit doing that, too much negative energy. My current approach is to just ignore them and focus on 'the good ones' and supporting those.That has been my general approach in life and it gives me the best feeling. Money is just an aspect of life, but helping others is worth so much more. That's my main motivation for @steemmakers. I delegated most of my SP there because I believe it is worth a lot more to help those writers than to try and optimize my own voting returns.

I sincerely hope you don't let get these aspects get to you, they are not worth it. And when you think of leeches ... they die without blood being given to them, look at the bright side :-)