Hello, this was very insightful to read.
I'm a newbie here and have been watching many video's on YouTube about tips for using SteemIt. The few posts I have made have had negligible votes/comments, when looking at the trending pages and intorduceyourself you can see people with 100's votes earning rewards, it's like oh man where on earth do I start ? How do I even get my posts seen? This is not driven by a desire to make money, but lets be honest here every single person on here wants to earn some! 

I want to connect with like minded people, when you're a deep thinker like my self, quite an alternative thinker full of thoughts and philosophies that most people around you in every day life could not even begin to comprehend, I'm excited at the thought that I might find these people on here, I might learn something, I might even be able to help people. But not if I can't get followers, not if my post's have one vote and £.01 value and drop off the home pages in a flash because there is no power behind it.  If I want to be seen and heard I have to take steps to build up my account no??? 

One guy said that up voting your own comments is a good way to build up if you're just starting out, as you correctly pointed out sometimes my own vote is the only one on my post, and I actually do not make random comments just so I can upvote my comment, but I will upvote any comments I make. I have made some lengthy comments on people's post's which actually have meaning (in my opinion), and I upvote these. 

Yet at the same time I'm not exactly at ease with it, he also showed some site where you enter a user name and it will automatically vote for you. As a newbie who entered Steemit thinking maybe this is something different (it is different but not in the way i expected), where you can share intelligent content which has nothing to do with X factor, or half naked women and actually be appreciated. It almost feels a little like SteemIt is actually a game you have to try and figure out. Work out the system and all the tricks, which mean's it's not about the content I write, or well not so much, it's more about how well I manage to play the game, as to whether or not my content even gets seen. 

It's frustrating and exciting at the same time, but I agree, I don't think it's entirely fair. And I wont upvote my comment here out of respect for your post :)