Yeah, you said a mouthful here and a lot of it was the conclusions I was already starting to come to. I never harbored any hopes of getting rich off of this platform but since I was already writing anyway, I thought "well, here's a platform to publish some of the stuff I can't get away with attaching my name to in this country (articles with less-than-favorable views of China tend to get an unpleasant response from the Chinese authorities). And who knows, maybe I'll make some supplemental income."
But the thing is nobody, and I mean nobody but nobody, actually reads anything on this site. Nobody's upvotes are based on the quality of the post. They're all upvoting based off of either "upvote for upvote" circle-jerks, or attempting to pounce on a comment early in the hopes of snatching a curator reward from the number of upvote-for-upvote circle-jerks it will be involved in later.