Hi Taraz. I know reputation means very little as it can be bought as such. The ones that haven't bought it though it does have meaning. I enjoy checking where I am and bypassing others like I am on the freeway. You haven't got that fun bit anymore as you are near the front and I have roughly 7000 users to bypass to catch you.
Experiments are good and it is bloody awesome.Have fun with it as we spend a heck of a lot of time here.
I have gone from about 130 to 87 in the last 6 weeks I think from the last time I posted like this. a lot of accounts are inactive at the top it seems. Still meaningless but fun to keep half an eye on and having some fun here is important, even when things are serious.
Reputation still shows in a very accurate way who has invested something. Capital doesn't lie as easy.
If I take a look at most hard working Steemians it shows 68 rep on most at the moment. It's not easy to get high up after a while as every level get's slower. If a person would try to fake it they would be in trending a lot and people will take notice of them. Especially if they behave in weird ways.
Nobody would have Time or Energy to be able to fake a reputation on high levels, they would have to boost something daily. And by that time people would detect that something is up.
This is a fair enough statement.
THere are several in this category above me but it is pretty obvious. I don't think there are many 2017ers ( I am January 2017) who would be up there let alone 2018ers without boosts.
At the end of the day, I hope that some of them at least have gathered some Steem and are using it to be a part of the community and not just extractors.
Steem will keep trickling down to people that truly want it. Real content creators would love to buy in on some cheap STEEM. As they would benefit so much more.
Since it's their daily bread. For a content creator Steem is 10x more valuable as they can leverage it so much. They can make a life style and monetise all their original content.
The network will automatically balance itself out as people not thinking it's fun anymore will sell. Others that are more hungry buys in.