You mentioned some great points in here, particularly the ratio of familiar to novel comes in helpful if one is trying to walk the line a bit more accurately.

The issue with the "tastes" of people is that it often isn't the taste of people, it's their unawareness to what is going on. Ever since Edward Bernays people have been blasted with fake and artificial needs, hollow role models and questionable idols.

While it is true that one can media-shamanistically word his posts and titles in a way that will trigger the familiarity aspect and at the same time allow for some novelty to drive the reader in checking out an article, I can also use this conditioning to my strong-willed advantage:

Generating a quality following.
Quality > quantity.

While it is true that I could benefit 'financially' from having more followers quickly, I am much more interested in building the right type of followers. People who themselves are out for quality and have a high level of quality expectation to their own content.

It might take a little longer but in the end you have a tribe you can count on, and pointless debates about basic notions are preemptively diffused because of the level of awareness in the followers you have amassed. Basic notions as in things you have grown tired of discussing because they are too far away from where you feel you are at. It would basically save both people the time, and allow them in turn to build their corresponding following in a more efficient way.

I figure, since I am building a whole new tribe on steemit anyway, after years on yt & fb, I might as well set the bar high from the beginning and not regret later that I downcalibrated too much to trigger people's unwilling conditioning factors they are not aware of, just toi get more exposure.

I'm in for the long haul. <3

Have a great slide into the new year, @actsman!