Yes, that's spot on. It forces us to think harder about how we create our content. I actually enjoy trying little things to inspire conversation.

This topic was certain to generate conversation given that it's something every active and engaged user is passionate about on Steemit.

But other posts need more effort put in to generating conversation.

My "drink your urine" post is an example of one that was designed to generate conversation, and it worked well. Others don't pan out as well, such as my beer reviews for example. But I do those for another competition and most of the engagement is on the competition page rather than my post.

I've tried educating spammers a couple of times before as well. It rarely works so I find hitting them with a flag is a quick way to tell them how highly their input is valued.