I understand your frustration as I have been trying to get my head around steemit myself. My personal opinion is that, at present, there is a lot of hype going around about making money here and also disillusion surrounding the power whales have.

steemit is still in it's beta phase. steemit needs to become a platform that people enjoy using for no other reason other than they just enjoy being here. People use facebook because they enjoy using it. They put up with it's crap because it's good point outweigh its bad.

When people move over to steemit and like using it whether they get paid for it or not. steemit will really take off. That's the challenge, moving from hype to actual utility.

I would encourage you stay and try to get something for yourself out of this new online experience.

Best of luck