Idea behind steemit is great, but so far many people are simply copying somebody else content and putting it as theirs or you have something like this
https://steemit.com/steemit/@themarkymark/steemit-creates-accounts-for-scammers-and-nobody-else. There is some shady things being done for sure. People also turn it as their advatage to earn more such as you can look for bid bots to upvote your post but you have to time everything right and look at others bids so you can end up with profit after circulation. It is hard to get noticed as many people are using such bots and without capital it can be a nightmare. But if you are persistent enough you should succeeded.
Steemit is more like a money making machine as with more steem power you have you can sell your votes to bots, create your own bot or even can "lend" steem power to others and earn good return.
For content you have to be really killing it to get noticed and as 1Referee stated
try to use other social media platforms to make yourself be more visible, and more important is to be consistent with your content, and if you are doing things right, you'll get what you want.
You can see it as mafia or what ever, but you have to think that people are forming the price of steem and so far it seems they are valuing the platform in the good way. If it was really bad platform it's coins wouldn't be worth much
