It's not about any of that. It's about playing the system and having a crew or team to prop up your posts... In reality, this is exactly what the whales do... They mostly only up vote content from their friends, associates or business partners so that they can abuse the system for their own benefits and ignore genuinely good posts... This is what most of us do, not often are people genuinely upvoting quality content. I've been on Steemit for over a year nothing has changed with how whales use the site.