Quite some stands you have and we'll you can't classify everyone there as jerks, to my best of knowledge I know backscratcher removes any soul that spams from its trail and if you have some personal issues with some of the users, the best way will be to report them so proper investigation could be done. For all you know most of these users you call jerks put up original contents that deserves even more than the rewards the get from the trail but because they are forgotten and left hanging they have to depend on the trail.

In as much as you spoke the negatives why don't you also see it as a way of help those great content curators who are forgotten by these same big stakeholders.