Exactly, people throw their votes at the same Whales everyday because the curation payout is so much better if they get onto those posts early, then they probably also save their voting power for those posts.
I actually joined Steemit to have a wallet for my Steem that wasn't an exchange. Because I couldn't transfer from Coinspot to Bittrex because Coinspot had a Bittrex STEEM account, so it was trying to transfer Bittrex to Bittrex, just with a different Memo. It didn't work so I got my coins back and created this account to move them to.

Once I looked around and realised what it was, I got excited, at first about the earning potential, yes, but then I realised that was not a guarantee and that I had started to enjoy learning new things like HTML and Markdown and also improving rusty skills like writing. I also enjoy going through my travel diaries and photo's and writing about awesome experiences, while remembering them. Now the rewards mean nothing, I just want my effort to be recognised, doesn't have to be financial, but if I am getting say 80votes, and 10-30 dollars but only 5 people actually read my post then I am frustrated, way more than if 20 people vote, I make 2 dollars and but 18 of them actually read it and properly look at it.