Very, very true. I recently posted how weighting votes by SP traps whales into self voting, and people only envy them the money, without recognizing the money forces them to not curate, as curation would take the place of earning from self votes, which they can't afford to do.
Whales are in this position because their votes are significantly weighted with SP, but minnows votes are worth pennies. Minnow votes are practically valueless, but do have great value in encouraging and creating relationships with others.
I pointed out in that post that minnows self voting just don't understand Steemit. I read a comment that said 'I upvote my comments because most of my rewards come from self votes.'
Such focus on immediate rewards prevent the blossoming of relationships from which far greater rewards - even speaking only of money - come.
Money isn't much of a reward, really. As many whales have discovered, it's also a trap.
I have better things to do.
Yeah, I stopped upvoting my posts before HF19. I didn't upvote my comments prior to that anyways. People got more voting people, so then it become more about how they can get money by self-voting. Money is the #1 drive of most of the people on the platform. Money is never first for me, but that doesn't mean it's not important, nor that I will let some power playing abuser of power walk all over me and flag my rewards away.
As for the whales self-voting, they had most of the power in SP voting to give themselves rewards before. What is your definition of a "whale"? Most "whales" (500k+) don't make posts.