Seeing as the 'Steemit whales' are the primary driving force behind payouts, I thought it would be good to try and get into the minds of the whales.
In it's current stage, attracting attention and new members to the site is likely one of the primary goals. What better way to do that than to create huge success stories, where content generators get huge payouts. Having several top posts where users are getting thousands of dollars for a post is very likely to grab someone's attention and draw them into the site!
Whether it is an actual plan, or some form of group-think, it seems likely that there is currently a strong motivation to make individual posts go viral and attract huge payouts. What do you think?
Also, what other behaviors do you think they are trying to influence/encourage by the way they vote?
If there are any whales who wish to share their thoughts on the subject, participation in the conversation is strongly encouraged ;)