I don't think that explains it. A lot of it is just a basic discoverability problem. Any given post is a raindrop in the ocean, if the thumbnail and title don't effectively grab attention, nobody will see your post.
This will cause a race to the bottom, I think. Maybe literally; pretty soon thumbnails will be predominantly attactive body parts, with as much on display as the Steemit rules allow.
Then again, that probably sounds pretty good to some people.
Take reddit. Remove the subreddits. Now add 30,000 redditors. You have Steemit.
Take Steemit. Add substeemits. Now add 234,000,000 Steemians. You have what you are looking for.
It's not that a drop of water in the ocean is hard to find. You just have to have enough eyes looking for your particular drop of water.
Why couldn't you have used the needle in the haystack? This would have ended so much better.