I think patience for good things is a virtue. Patience for everything is silly.

Agree.

Without continued influx of fresh unique high quality content, the site is an empty shell of code (and advertising).

This is only true about Steemit itself, and does not apply to the underlying asset (Steem) or any of the other possible front-ends, games, and other digital assets.

Steem as a pure cryptocurrency with no social media element still has lot of value by itself. The power for anyone with coins to distribute 90% of the inflation generated is pretty awesome. Steem is the hardest cryptocurrency to steal (that I know of) and the easiest one to control the keys directly. Putting tunnel-vision on Steemit.com is an oversight.