Perception is important. You need to decide in terms of curation which goal is more important to you, the amount of steem power you get from curation, or improving steemit.

I agree wholeheartedly. It's also important to remember that "improving steemit" means increasing the value of the steem that's already in your wallet. It's not entirely an altruistic thing. More like short-term vs. long-term.

I try to upvote some introduceyourself posts every day. I also try to upvote content I encounter that is well-written/prepared, even if it's on a topic that doesn't interest me or presents an opinion with which I disagree.

As I explain here, I'm also a big fan of bot curation for similar reasons.