the problem is that the community doesn't really pay any attention and there is a very big gap in engagement vs people posting and wanting to earn.

What I realized through engaging with newbies (and some other not-that-newbies) is that everyone expects to be upvoted on their posts, but not many are really upvoting others with their stake! I see a lot of delegations going out to big whale accounts (some of them aren't even curators as they upvote according to stake), leaving the responsibility for upvoting to big whale accounts... I wouldn't say that it's a problem of those big accounts, but rather the community mindset, as you stated... If I want to go hard, it could be called hypocrisy, as people expect something, without giving anything in return...

Of course, there are a bunch of automatic votes and favoritism, but that's something that will always exist...