Is Steemit Already Over

Is Steemit over?

After hearing stories again and again of users unable to gain any solid ground on Steem, it makes me wonder if this platform has already developed too strong of a user hierarchy to be a truly fair playing field?

I've been reading again and again articles on what specific actions lead to getting up-votes, and they all say one of two things: utilise the comments sections on articles in order to gain up-votes for insightful comments or criticisms, or continue to post vast amounts of quality content every day for months on end.

However, after reading through many user's struggles that simple isn't working.

A lot of the time, when posting (especially introductory posts) people don't actually read your post. There are users not utilising their up-vote potential, and responding to the headline instead of the post content.