I actually wrote something very similar and posted it just a minute after this post.

And looking at the comments, it seems many others are doing the same. Many of us are tired and craving better from this platform, to push interaction ahead of quick gains.

As for the UI: I've made countless posts in the past referring to how awful the site's UI is when it comes to searching for content, given the only content that can be found is in a sea of fresh posts or thrown to the top of a category from artificial curation. It's certainly frustrating to see absolutely nothing being done to try and improve content discovery. It's all just very lazy with a "Not our problem" argument from Steemit Inc.

Unfortunately I'm not going to Steemfest, but I think I have forgotten to use a free witness vote.

Here's to a better Steemit.