I would say yes - whales distribute those big incomes. They push you if you are good for marketing "See this famous person is now also on Steemit - already earned big money" ... but once you try to start to build a sustainable income from posting content you are not much of interest anymore and you just get whats distributed by the rest of users that dont have much power - and thats pocket change.

Coming from the dogecoin community - this is a known pattern from the coins early days, to push your cryptocurrency. But at least doge community did much charity stuff and very fast accepted that tipping pocket change in the long run is cool too - not making too much promises that you could make a living on doge tips - its more a fun thing now - to be just a part of it and feel rich because of so much dogecoins. But Steem is making the promise that you can make real profits from your content and is showing earnings in USD - so thats different in the long run.

I like the experiment they are doing. But the rule seems simple at the moment - drive attention to steemit an you have a good chance to get supported by whales. Try to drive attention to your own agenda and live with the pocket change.

Maybe whales will pick some projects to push as an example "see this guy is wrong - xyz is making constant money" ... but to prove me wrong, steem needs to show more than some single PR examples and show that it can have real impact by empowering a large user base - not just a Steem-Aristocracy.