I agree with basically all of this, and your point is right that Hive is dominating in PR, but that is also very surprising and confusing to me.

First, those same folks were on Steem for three or four years, and many of them never seemed to make any substantial effort (with a handful of exceptions) at promoting Steem outside the chain.

Second, when JS came in, he was rumored to be some sort of marketing genius, but (so far?) I just haven't seen it (off-chain... what they've been doing w/ 100 days of Steem on-chain has been great.)

I guess the sudden improvement in PR by the exiters could be partly due to a learning curve and partly explained by the fact that they perceived a new threat, but I'm really puzzled about why no one has been telling Steem's version of the story to the rest of the world.