The activity was of low quality and the atmosphere was quite stale.

For the most part yes, but for me as a creator, nothing much changed - as a consumer, it did.

Now it's paid votes again and those only make me angry, so they can have it, and shove it up their asses.

At least in the past, people complained on those posts, now there isn't even a comment. =D

Could have earned maybe $1000 in that time but what I believe in is more valuable to me I guess.

I probably got somwhere around that, as did the curators who voted - they are nearly all on Hive from what I have seen. If they are going to vote anyway, they might as well vote to support Hive.

Right now the push is to focus on onboarding new content creators by the thousands rather than consumers by the thousands, so this is the part where I retreat to the shadows and watch.

I think most believe it is the logical order of things - but that is not how most sites start. people start consuming before the "real" creators come in, as they need an audience before it is worthwhile.

We were talking about fastfood places today, in the city I lived, there were 7 McDonald's (at the time) and there was no possibility for more franchises to open. There were 105-110 thousand people in the city, and they need at least 15,000 per location on average before they will grant another in that region of Australia.