I think #STEEM is doing fine. Even we have bots and other automated processes abusing the eco system, content curating works OK. Look at the Trending and New content, it is meaningful. Not the best quality and lots of quality content goes under radar, but at least it's OK. I personally like browsing New content to find new interesting steemians and content like you are. And also you have these awesome apps like steepshot, dtube etc. They can give you good exposure even with low SP. Main problem for minnows are HF20 and Resource Credits. If a minnow doesn't have some delegated SP they quickly run out of Resource Credits and get bad UX where they can have one or two meaningful actions per day.