"I’ve listened to folks in the top tiers of Steem Monsters (some of the Mavericks and particularly one of the owners of Peakmonsters) refer to accounts like mine as “pathetic” and stating that they’d like to downvote us all."

This is one of the resaons why i think steem as a content platform will fail.
If you have elitists picking and choosing who can and can't post then people will just walk away. May as well be on youtube or facebook where there is less friction.
Steem will probable become a good utility tokens but steemit as a social media platform.. I don't think