IS STEEMIT DYING, OR IS IT JUST ME ???

Hello to you all my fellow steemians. Hello witnesses, whales, dolphins and minnows.
Yeah, I know the topic before us is indeed a strange one, but it's something we all must stop to think about. This month of March would make it 2 years of steemit existence. When I take a look at coinmarketcap.com and see steem price, I wonder if we are at the level we ought to be. I know we've seen better days.
Someone may argue that it's because of falling price of Bitcoin, but believe me when I say it's not.

If I remember vividly, our sign up page says "EARN WITH YOUR MIND" but have we steemians changed it to "Earn with your connection" or "Earn with how much you can pay"? As I was signed up, I was told that to make it on you just have to socialize and make freinds, also posts just original contents. You may say this is just a newbie/minnow rant. But if the former were true, then why do I still see people of 60 reputation earn barely $2 on their quality and original posts? The answer is that there is no efficient distribution of steem power for curation. Those with the steem power have decided to turn steemit into a business, where they sell their votes. so if you are not ready to buy votes, it means you would remain at your level of low upvotes. How many dolphins and minnows can confidently beat his chest and say I earn high and I don't have to kiss ass or pay for upvotes.

One truth I've seen here is that those who actually make it in steemit are the whales and not dolphins or minnows. I see someone write crap and it goes into trending page earning over $300. I see others who posts up to 10 times daily earning over $200 on each posts, I also see another whose career is making bots to receive more intrest from selling votes not caring if the vote buyers are in profit or loss. What about the upvote masters that just upvotes only their posts and maybe upvote for those who kiss their assess for votes. The rich keep getting richer and the poor if tired should just quit. I don't think this was what @ned had in mind when creating this platform. Here is supposed to be a decentralised system, where every steemian should have equal opportunity. But I think this vision is eroding as steemit is now becoming just a business place.

Where are the minnows and those who can afford to buy lots of steem power in all this? It's obvious that many have quit already, and many more would follow suit. "Come for the money stay for the community" like seriously?? We should tell ourselves the truth and quit deceiving ourselves. Most of us here appx. 90% of us are here for what we can benefit. So when you don't see any benefits, isn't it better you just return back to your Instagram and Facebook where you would obviously do better in terms of socialising.

If I didn't learn anything in economics, at least i know that when a commodity is wanted( in high demand) that price goes, up and if people are dumping such commodity for another, that it's price would go down. This is a typical steemit scenerio, after taking a look at state of the steem by @reko, I noticed the huge amounts of steem dumped on exchanges, and this is done obviously by the whales. So why won't prices drop. The effect of a minnow selling just 10 steem cannot be compared to that of a whale selling about 5000 or more steem .

Yesterday, I came across a post by @nairadaddy where he spoke about bid bots and how they cause a tear in our steem ecosystem.
This is actually a truth. Bots have done more harm than good to steemit. I propose that we all start a campaign #killthebots because it's these that full up the trending pages and don't give the poor minnows a chance at limelight. Lets speak out in one voice. There should be another trending page for those bot users or another page that shows trending based on the number of upvotes gotten and not by earning.

SMT is not the only thing that can save steemit, out attitudes as steemians also have a lot to play. I love steemit, and wouldn't want to see it die. Please let's all play our parts in saving this great platform and first of its kind.
lets fight to save it.