The network value experienced a similar 90-95%+ drop in 2016 long before linear, and also at that time it was also greatly underperforming other cryptocurrencies.

It was also at the time that broad awareness of Steem was likely close to its peak, and was certainly very high, as it was the first social network-connected blockchain or cryptocurrency and people were notable people from both within and without the cryptocurrency world were flocking to it in part due to the high and highly visible payout values. Dan and Ned were featured on many well known podcasts, etc. One can even see the many attacks on Steem as a scam or ponzi scheme as a sign of its (short-lived) success; nobody even bothers to make these attacks now. At #70+ in market cap ranking, it's not even worth attacking.

And yet, in 2016, long before linear was even considered, it not only lost a tremendous amount of its value, but it fell in value to the point that did not suggest investor believed in there being a lot of promise for it. (Nor, I might add, did apparently Dan, since he left for something which, we can all see with the benefit of hindsight, has indeed been far more promising.) The decision to switch to a linear model, however we may feel about it now, did not happen in a vacuum, it was made after seeing the superlinear model fail to perform in driving the growth and retaining value.

No one has demonstrated either a solid descriptive or predictive model nor empirical evidence as for why people would buy Steem in order to influence eyeballs. There are gaping flaws and leaps of faith in any argument I have ever seen including the original white paper.

This does not mean that Steem can't become popular or increase in value, but these are still very different question, and I don't really attribute the lack of success Steem has ever had (regardless of payout curve) in convincing investors of its promise to the 'eyeballs' issue in and of itself. I attribute it to lack of any convincing story for why Steem should succeed and accrue value. In that I largely agree with @lukestokes.

Probably the closest I've ever seen is the "secret plan for world domination" post that @lukestokes likes to reference (and he is not alone). Indeed that post also has very little to do with people buying Steem to influence eyeballs. It is more about growing a large community with users and a variety of useful apps (including smart contracts) which uses Steem as its currency platform. Unfortunately we got really distracted by this whole "paying content creators" concept which was supposed to be a means to an end. When it became largely an end in and of itself and a primary focus, things went downhill from there.