I couldn't put it better myself. I had one friend who joined and stick with it for about two months, in the last few weeks of that two months he got picked up by curie twice getting a payout of eight odd dollars on two separate posts. However when he didn't start getting that on every post he quit.
Its very short sighted. You are so right about the surges. There have been exceptionally lean times and just when you think it's getting awful something big usually happens!
Ive had a few buddies from YouTube that did that. Im actually making them a deal for their Steem for Paypal. TBH it kind of pisses me off that they quit.