Paul, bravo to your daughter for being seen in public with her Dad looking like "Dog, The Bounty Hunter." [See my comment on, "They Call Me YellowBeard. :-) ]
Bravo to you for the Rant.
In theory, theory and reality are the same. In reality, they're not. This applies to almost everything in life. It's an axiom on steroids when applied to Steemit. NOTHING ... works the way it's advertised.
The on-boarding issue is ridiculous. I waited 15 days before throwing in the towel and paying $45 to SteemCreate for an account (2 minutes). Once active, I would habitually be bandwidth frozen for 7-8 hours every morning. Why? For engaging in the precise behavior encouraged by Steemit for newbies ... creating great content and spending hours commenting and replying. Old-guy-photos rode to the rescue and delegated me 50 SP (which I am still using) to solve the problem.
We're in Beta ... patience.
You can only hide behind platitudes for so long.
Blockchains are open source. All the code is there for the world to see ... and that's why there are well over 1,000 cryptocurrencies. Copy-Paste ... a new crypto. How long will it be before someone says, "Enough ... we'll create a Revamped Steemit by a different name?" Frankly, I'm surprised it hasn't happened already.
As bad as all this is, it pales by comparison to the reality that Steemit is failing miserably at it's Central Premise: That Content Will Be Compensated Commiserate With It's Quality.
Nice theory. The reality is that content is compensated on the basis of one's financial ability to jury-rig the upvoting system ... either directly, through massive use of voting-bots; or, indirectly, by joining voting rings. Abstaining from such behavior, perhaps based upon a sense of honor, guarantees failure. Shakespeare himself could not succeed on Steemit without "playing the game."
Any organization that fails at its Central Premise ... fails.
Take a look around the table. If you can't spot the sucker, it's you.
I hear you. Maybe Dan will get it right with social media and EOS?