The model is working for a very few lucky people. The rest are being disappointed pretty quickly or are too dumb to know what's going on. As far as digging through transactions goes, there are others out there with more to lose and better internet connections so I'll let them do the research part of things. I already feel like I'm wasting the time that I spend here.
The problems I listed above in the last paragraph are blatantly obvious to anyone participating and are enough to kill 99% of the hope I had for this platform and many others have said they feel the same. I've voiced these concerns in quite a few comments but no one with the power to do anything about it seems to care.
Also, the lack of curation here is frustrating. If someone takes the time to type out a few hundred words expressing ideas that could improve the site, they usually deserve an upvote for their effort. Everything I post is in the best interest of steemit and the world in general and nine out of ten of my posts and comments are completely ignored. It's sad.