You nail the issue right in the head. I have tested this participation thing in the past and was a little disappointed... :S

On my channel I did a giveaway of free games a few months ago - and got 0 answers. In that case you only needed to say you wanted the game.
Got 0 answers apart from a friend that took pity on me.

I am mostly a podcaster and the majority of the coments I get are the generic bot-like answers of "nice music" - which to me add a little bit of insult to injury.

It is a bit disheartening, but it can only improve with time as we get more and more users on the platform.
Until then we just need to keep producing cool content - like you are - and eventually things will gel into place.