There are thousands of rather useless or not interesting at all posts and threads on steemit, that going through one by one literally takes a day job time.
I see many good stories here with no attention around them and some random ones with lots of votes and rewards.
Seems to me people are in a race for posting any kind of content non stop.
I agree sometimes it seems like overload of content.
I find its good to follow lots of people I find interesting. That way my feed has stuff I know I will like and I don't follow a ton of people so there isn't an overload of content.
Plus I have lots of time to browse my favourite tags and see what hot and find new authors and content.
You have to be active and leave lots of positive feed back and vote ur maximum daily.
It's a lot of the little things you do aside from posting that get you votes as much as the post it self.
Keep at it
Start following people who post content you like, and then you will get a good selection in your news feed. Also use the various tabs to search, whether you are looking for new articles or things that are already trending.