The discord chat is hard to follow, but I'm making an effort to be more active there (thanks to your advice actually- so thanks!), and it's cool to get to know the people in the platform and see how welcoming they are, even if it doesn't bring immediate results.
I think that slowly all of us newer steemeans will become more powerful and be able to influence the trends of the platform, and for now it's really just about keeping on trying to figure it out I guess.