it was made after seeing the superlinear model fail to perform in driving the growth and retaining value.

I disagree and many metrics disagree with your opinion. Superlinear reward weren't given enough time but aren't fundamentally flawed like linear. Don't get me wrong, I was super aware of the collusive voting going on to game the curation but it couldn't be perfectly gamed as the collusion would always profit some more than others.

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.

I bought Steem under superlinear to influence the platform knowing other people would compete to do the same. Currencies are just that, store of influence, store of energy. Whether or not people understand this doesn't make it less true.