Great post.

I think your correct in saying there are many new users that fade away really quickly.

There are some interesting things that happen in the third world cultures Steemit is being promised as a way to pull yourself out of poverty there are recruitment seminars in Africa, and Indonesia that encourage and try to teach the users to band together.

It's hard to make the reality match those expectations.

Engagement is a real issue as well the price of steem goes up and down as it will and groups like curie are great at rewarding good content but often lack their community engagement on curated posts, A good example was one of my Alphabet Adventures at the time paid out it was $184 stu no bid bots with a steem price that equated to about $800aud and the only engagement coming from the amazing people at The Steam Engine somehow the rewards felt hollow.

Rewards count while I like researching and writing my posts if they never went past 0.2stu for my efforts if I don't know if would keep doing it.