It sounds like you see the inflation being distributed far and wide as not ideal, and I’m having a hard time understanding that

This is not true at all. In fact when I downvote it is usually the highest rewards content and the highest reward earners. By reducing these concentrated rewards, the effect is to distribute reward more widely, not less.

In my view the greatest value is broad participation as well as app building, the reliability and efficiency of the blockchain, reasonable distribution of the token and decent exchange support/liquidity. I'm not seeing that much of the value is the original/core social app at all. It's there, it works, it has helped build a community of users (albeit fairly small), but it's cost-benefit payoff isn't great compared to second layer apps such as games, defi, alternate community models, potential future user growth from all of the above, etc.