There does seem to be significant hostility towards noobs from the powers that be.
I think certain cliques view all noobs as spammers. I actually saw one who said that noobs tended to comment because they were "beggars" hoping for an upvote!
Which is such a horrible thing to say. Most noobs would like to write a great lengthy post and get votes for that - but if you get a two cents for a long post and two cents for a short comment, you might as well go for the comment.
Also - some witnesses are heavily involved in fighting spam and I wonder if that has coloured their thinking. A bit like how people who work in vice departments of the police tend to view humanity through a very dark lens, even though the majority are decent and not involved in vice. I think a mindset has taken hold that all noobs are spammers and must be stamped out.
Yes, I think there is a distorted perception that comes from fighting spam so much. I never had a problem with spam. I might get one or two spam comments per post, and just ignored them usually, or occasionally would flag. I see newbies through the lens of who I was just 7 months ago! But a lot of witnesses and old-timers spend a lot of time fighting spam and all they see is that they didn't used to have to. So to them it is new people causing the spam.
I learned today that Ned (CEO of STINC) is developing a new company that will create a new frontend UI for STEEM that will be more user friendly. He actually says it as being for "normies." I think that's you and me, non-techies.
Whether it will be able to get past the restrictions of RCs is another matter, because it still will rely on the underlying platform rules. But at least it shows there is some commitment from the company to try to be newbie friendly.