I think resteem are good, I just think it's bad when resteeming is ALL someone does. I am trying to get a contest started, my aim is to give new users an opportunity to earn by creating original content. It's not doing as well as I'd like but I'm young here and not as connected as I need to be, still I'm going to keep it going.
I agree, the platform GUI does make it difficult to get noticed, especially as more people join and posting rate goes to the moon.
Last week, @samstonehill resteemed my contest and it shot up in views and votes, so resteeming does help a lot. I suppose finding the balance is what needs to be done, like you said. It does annoy me when I think, hmm, imma check you out, go to your feed and find loads of resteems and very few original pieces.