you gotta use your brain to create rewards

They did. But other people used their brain to identify that their rewards were deemed to be a fraudulent, low effort use of the reward pool. In my opinion, that's good.

If the engagement is artificial (more like a gleam give away, eg to pump up follower numbers or subscribers) - then the only person it benefits is the person running the circus, not the people participating, because guess what, there's only gonna be one winner - and it isn't the name the wheel spin who determined who won.

"Fee-less" tipping would be a disaster. That's basically every hive-engine token. I know I keep saying that people create because they want to create, but I know that a lot of people are on hive not for that reason alone.