Cool question, man.. Lol, funny story: I actually came to Steemit via the somewhat "controversial" figure, you may have heard of him, Trevon James--the youtube "cryptoanalyst," (in)famous for his involvement in the BitConnect scandal... But yes--Mr. James had been "pumpin hard" the Steemit train, and I jumped--one of the things I am glad I did based on James' "non-advice..."

It's been a roller-coaster since I've been here--became caught in the cross-fire of the Haejin/ BernieSanders Gang Wars; had some moderate success posting videos of me playing music; got "into it" with the judges of Steemit's current "openmic" judges over some bs. Met some cool people (the op being one of them :). And am continually amazed at the multitude of ideas and unique experiences and opinions people bring to the platform from all over the world.. (Though, these "interactions" themselves can be somewhat "rocky" at first ;)

As far as my experience with talking to "outsiders" about Steemit--it's been spotty. There's definitely some sort of "psychological bias" involved--can't think of the fancy clinical term atm--but basically, because I am so into steemit, and think it's so great, it's almost unfathomable that others might not share the same opinion--forgetting that they may just simply not have yet been exposed, or maybe they have. Take, my parents, for example--I have told them about steemit, but, heck, they don't even have facebook let alone do I think they're gonna get on here any time soon... (Not that the two are necessarily even that similar--but you hopefully see my point).

I'm not sure why Steemit has yet to become more widely adopted. My theory is, as some others around here postulate, it's still too "techy" and "complicated" to be popularly adopted at this stage in the game. Even though, comparatively speaking, I think Steem is relatively less "complex" than certain other platforms/ conceptualizations within the blockchain space. Even still-- the private and public keys; just simply setting it up can be a bit daunting to the not-so-tech-savvy individual. I think once some of those logistical issues are surmounted, and blockchain as a technology per se has become implemented ubiquitously--which I do believe it will--then more "secondary" usages, like a social networking site, will, by necessity become commonplace. But this likely won't be for a few more years, in my estimation.

That's all I got for now. Signing off... gjones15