I get the sense you've had a "last straw" moment with this :) I must confess, when I first arrived on Steemit I was totally clueless! Just like you said, I treated it the same way as I would Instagram or YouTube because it's all I knew, but then I hit that Bandwidth issue and I thats when I realised that this platform is an entirely different animal.
In many ways I'm very lucky, the person who invited me here has been very informative and supportive with this, so while the learning curve is steep, it isn't insurmountable at least. I guess you could say that I have "woken up" to the reality of the system now and so my strategy has changed to reflect that. I think anyone coming here to get rich quick needs to wake up as well (and fast) because they are being foolish!
Over time I have come to see the same names posting multiple times a day and with "questionable" content, such as photos or wallpapers that they themselves have not taken, they are simply popular photos they found on Google uploaded in hopes of drawing in more followers who will all upvote. I compare them to those people on YouTube who rip-off popular / trending videos and then upload them to their own channel just to get the views and the likes.
Unfortunately, I think when you have any platform that offers the possibility of income such as YouTube and Steemit then it will always attract the "treasure hunters." But I'm hoping that won't happen on here as I'm really starting to get the feel of the place; admittedly with a heck of a lot more to learn :)
It is in the early stages still and there is still a lot to work on and learn for all. This means more opportunity so don't get to used to the way it is now either, it can change with any hardfork. exciting :)
Sound advice :)