For a new steemian, all they can see is trending, new, hot, and promoted. They haven't built a list of people to follow. So the only place they could even find other minnows is in new.

And new has zero quality control, so it's easy to get discouraged in finding quality content/relationships.

I wish there were a decent search function that would allow people to find others that are above trash tier, but below the dolphins and whales.