It used to be a lot worse when the Drugwars 1 click image posts were a major part of the content that was posted. I guess the Ponzi aspect is not strong enough (like 1% daily bitconnect) for the ones are completely delusional to get into it while those who are more realistic realize that there is something not 100% right currently. It's somewhat the worst of 2 worlds. If steem drops out of the top 100 it will be indeed a big red flag. There are a lot of good things about this blockchain (real advertisement income, user-friendly, ...) but if the fundamental upvote/mining mechanic is broken it's going to be hard to make everything work.