"Just talk good things about Steem to get upvotes"

With proof-of-brain getting at least somewhat functional, there's been a fair amount of critique that most of the stake is just going towards "Steem cheerleading", if you will, instead of "actual content". Just please the whales. Well, there are whales who are looking for non-Steem related content. @acidyo and @theycallmedan just to name a couple. Furthermore, I've seen many non-Steem posts reaching Trending, like this and this, albeit Steem is the dominant topic at the moment.

But what one should understand about Steem (yes, I'm talking about Steem), is that this platform, that a wide variety of users have stumbled upon, is work in progress; it's like a collective start up to create an economy around the idea of proof-of-brain and reward all those who support it. Social media actions are an aspect of it, but it can be applied to other areas such as games - Splinterlands being a good example of this.

The critique over content being rewarded asymmetrically is a fair one, however, remember that proof-of-brain wasn't even functional just a month ago on content. The economical changes in Hard Fork 21 were just a start where Steem's end goal is to be: a platform to provide a good user experience for wide audience. This end goal will be closer with the arrival of Communities and Smart Media Tokens that will improve content discovery which in fact sucks ass at the moment.

While we are yet to provide the big audience a friendly user experience, Steem-centric content is unavoidable, because Steem is the platform that is used to communicate about the development of Steem. I would argue that it is actually very good that there is a lot of information available publicly - Steem is an open and transparent system after all, the development of which should not happen behind closed doors.

Whether users like it or not, they are part of an evolving ecosystem that is still on its way to be able to support a wide variety of different communities and niches that can empower themselves.

Though I agree that rewarding all kinds of quality content is important even at this point, because those willing to put more effort on their content on Steem are often more willing to also be owners in the ecosystem. Increasing distribution in such a manner will provide future stability for the chain in the long run.

@curangel is one of the projects that aims to distribute stake wide in such a manner with a varied group of curators (me being one of them), so if you think rewarding underrated content is important, you can delegate to @curangel to support the cause.