You don't really fall into what I refer to as 'the whales', you have just over 1000mv and that is totally acceptable, for me.
Many accounts have that much and if 'the community' wanted to express their displeasure with you, you would quickly find that your rewards have gone to bupkis.
IF they were mad enough at you, they could wipe your curation rewards, too.
The collateral damage is much greater, but if they really wanted to zero you, they could.

It's the accounts with 10x that amount, and are untouchable by 'the community' that are really holding us back.
Who joins a game that is rigged against you that hard?

Clearly, the answer is not many.
Especially, when the selling point is, 'like it or lump it'.

It takes most folks a long time to get to that first 1mv, and then they can look forward to being diluted at only 10,000x by folks that have been here from the beginning and the cost basis of their hive is zero.

I understand that when the fork to hive occurred the code wasn't ready for mass adoption.
The memory requirements made the servers and rpc nodes very expensive to run.
Chasing away users would make sense in that scenario.

But, this 'take it or leave it' mantra came with us from the legacy chain.
It had already established our reputation with those that had large audiences outside of hive.
Once those folks got flagged from the platform for 'earning too much', most of the crowd left with them.
Not to return absent some believable shakeup in the management, IF then.

Now, this is another hill we have to overcome.
Nobody wants to believe that 'the whales' have changed their ways, and frankly, they have no real reason to do so.
The overbearing reaping of the newb attractant pool is just as hard as it ever was.
The bottom line doesn't care if the rewards were burned, they weren't distributed to attract newbs and retention takes a hit.

The response was 'but they are dumping it all' and nobody wanted to be reminded that nobody dumps anything if it wasn't voted to them first.

The curation gangs control that, and they are backed by whale stake.
It's nobody's fault, but their own.
IF they really wanted it to change, they would change.
But, as it is, dumping by the newbs is an excellent source of cheap hive and on a 50 year time scale that is invaluable.

The top 20 curating accounts control 50% of the pool, day after day, year after year.
This fact of the hive continues to drive people away.
Many of the folks that have persisted have communicated with me about wondering why they continue to do it.
Their rewards have not ever been 'worth it'.

I have ~450 autovotes set on my autovote account and it rarely votes more than 10 in a day.
Everybody else quit banging their heads on the control freaks' brick wall.

It's hard enough to herd cats, but when you add in what has been done to the crowd all these years, it's starting to look insurmountable.
Perhaps, by design.

I stay because I am making a record for my progeny.

Like I make more money if I upvote only the stuff that gets the most upvotes

Can you expand on that?
Curation used to compound by how much stake voted after you did, but the window involved was expanded to 24 hours, then day 2 to day 4, and then day 5 to 7, or some such.
Each window lowering your curation rewards to give it to the people that voted before you.

Do you think the 'more money' is coming from votes after the initial 24 hour window, or does it happen during the first day?

I can't read the code, so I have to fly by the seat of my pants on these things.