I agree Steemit puts way more emphasis on social commitment than youtube does. Youtube growth is highly linked to it´s ranking algorithms.

There are basically 3 kinds of viewers. The ones super interested in the topic of your video, the ones slightly interested and the ones who don´t give a flying fuck. The first group is likely to click on your video and watch it entirely which gives you plenty of watch time. The size of this group is just not so big.

The second group is the one you want to drag to your video by optimizing the video wherever you can. Make them click on the video by having a good title and thumbnail, than try to make them watch the video longer than the 20-30 second mark etc.

On steemit only upvotes and the value of the upvotes count. That means you have to make the second group not only to click on your video and watch it you have to convince them to sacrifice voting power. That´s why it is a good idea to basically make friends that will upvote your posts on a regular base.

So, I guess they just post their stuff here and expect to be successful. Just as you basically said they don´t give their viewers any incentive to upvote them regularly.

Rants are fine if they are well reasoned imo ;-)