While my gateway into Crypto has been mining ETH, ZEC & others, I agree with a lot of what you are saying.
STEEM is the only Crypto that has me wanting to buy it because of what I can DO with it rather than just because I think it will go up or generally support the concept.
I think that this will come for other cryptos, but its here already with Steem!
It is a bit addictive really, just like Facebook was in the beginning, but without the value of your content being sucked out by Zuckerberg like in the Matrix.