Well you are not wrong.. actually the true source of influence was supposed to be the “reputation score” and not “steem power” or “No. of followers” for that matter. However, right now, there is no criteria to see whether a user delivers extraordinary content except if you manually observe bloggers. Case in point, highest reputation score on platform is of haejin.. can you believe it... 
On paper i have got somewhat like 750+ followers but thats not a true number though, is it? Most of my followers are either now dead (means they left steemit after snooping around a bit) or they are bots.. the numbers keep increasing with every post that i make, yet there is no fun in that anymore..

It has all become an illusion.. even right now, many people are rushing to make a comment on your post in hopes that you would read them and reward them with your super upvote.. reduce your SP to 500 today and all of this illusion on your comment section will disappear with it.

however i choose to look at the positive side everytime.. because to be honest, whats the alternative?