RE: Want to Put the Social Back Into the STEEM Social Media Platform?
Hello @glenalbrethsen!
Maybe there are many like me (Venezuelan) who strives to improve the quality of the post to earn more, for the fact of having Steemit as a means of livelihood.
But it is frustrating, difficult, sometimes as you say, we feel embarrassed to post content, other times we leave the heart in some posts that usually receive only a few cents and you see others with a meme earns hundreds of dollars. That is disheartening.
As I once told a friend, I like comments and I love to answer them, but there was a time when I got a lot of comments and I thought it was because of the post and the main reason was because the post was voted by a curator who paid those who commented. I was saddened because I thought it had caught people's attention. But none of them commented on my other posts.
That's discouraging. But, as I mentioned at the beginning, we can't afford to give up. So what's left for us to do is move forward.
Maybe with practice and little courage we'll get a good spot on this network.
With the help of my dear friend @crypto.piotr, I am learning to engage with more people at Steemit and interact with others. 
Thanks for sharing!
Hey, @jadams2k18.
It's not as easy to engage with people here as it probably should be. It does take a while, and quite a bit of work to find others who will actually comment back. I'm still doing it after fifteen months. I doesn't help that people come and go.
I think in some cases with those memes you speak of there's some bidbots involved, which means they're not actually making the amount that's shown there—they've already spent a lot of it so their post will get high enough to be seen. I suppose it can be discouraging, but it's also deceptive.
There are a couple of curator trails that hosts comment contests. I think they're good in that decent content gets some more comments and likes than it might otherwise. The downside is, that doesn't mean all of sudden you have a larger following. However, it's good to get recognized here and their, and maybe some relationships will spring out of them.
Thank you for clarifying that point about memes. I agree with you.