So many comments, hard to keep up. Anyway, I'm resteeming this.

I was going to make a post about exactly this topic! and it's exactly what I've been telling people. I did make a tangentially related post where I talked about the fact that people promote Steem by telling people "come here to earn money", but they never say that it's just pennies and you can't live off of it.

I have friends who've come thinking this was some get-rich-quick scheme for blogging and left in disappointment because it was so much work for a little chance of getting curated.

I've taken to promoting Steem recently, but using the "honest" tactic. I was inspired by this post by @paulag where she talks about the fact that we've got a ton of content creators, because that's what it's being promoted for! And we don't have viewers or interaction. It's just post post post, no actual life in most places here. Yeah, featured and popular posts have tons of interaction, but even I, having 1500 followers, only get a comment on my posts every once in a while (mostly I just get bots and spam).

So when I talk about Steem now, I say it's a cool social place where you can come hang out, make friends, be free and uncensored by "Big Media", like you said it is, Web 3.0, the logical no-middle-man evolution of social media. I wish people paid more attention to designing stuff toward that end, but the incentive is in the wrong direction.

Lol, I have so much to say about this, because I've been thinking all that you said for so long, but I hadn't solidified it into a thing yet, but thanks to you I've got many more of my ideas in order about it. I hope I can make a few posts about this and outline some open source marketing plans for the sake and the future of Steem. I still have to think some things through; thanks again for bringing up this topic.