Not a new topic
There has been already written a lot about the trending topics on Steemit. At the beginning there were only posts that were really trending by the views and upvotes they got from people actually reading them. But that seems to be history at the moment.. At this time is is a new type of shop window where you can advertise your posts by (mis) using bidbot's or other way's of getting artificial upvotes.
I picked out some posts on the Trending page of 'All tag's':
Excel seems to have a problem wit the word Revenue, it's removing the E everytime lol
As you see in this post the poster paid 410,6 SBD to bidbot's and got a revenue of 719,33 $ (111,30 SBD, 183,15 Steem and 266,71 SP). Although the figures have to be adjusted on the hight of the SBD and Steem, you can tell that this post was worth investing.... Is it fair? That's up to everybody to decide, I don't think it's fair. Wat it the intention to get the post read more because of the trending, I don't thinks so. Looking at the history of this particular poster he or she uses bidbot's all the time, so the motives for Steemit are (to me) not integer... But who am I to judge....
The second post has put some more money into BidBot's but got less revenue on his investment. (although it's still counting). he invested 1021 SBD and get's in return 1007,5 (156,63 SBD, 257,73 Steem and 375,32 SP). So he loses about 13,5 SBD (?)....
Why am I pointing this out
My prior reason is because I think this use of BidBot's is wrong in several way's. Although people are of course free to use them it has a bad influence on things. (my personal opinion).
Mis-use of Trending page
Because of the masive upvotes by bidbot's the trending page isn't for the real trending topic's anymore. people who get a lot of exposure and upvotes in the 'natural' way won't ever reach the rewards (anymore) those bought posts have. So quality stay's hidden...
Getting 'Fear of Missing out Votes'
With that I mean is that the Whales and Dolphins (mostly) misusing the BidBot's have a great group of followers who are there only in the hope they get a 'big' upvote from the Whale or Dolphin so they upvote the whale or dolphin (again) with precious (often low) votes. So other people much more deserving these votes are there empty handed and won't get recognized...
What is the purpose of bidbots
From origin bidbots where invented to help the minnows getting exposure, so it was (and for me still are) intended to create more visibilty for hard work posts. In order to create a broader and following. It never was intented to be cashcow's for the (already) fortunate steemians... Doing so in my opinion is abuse of the tools and not respecting the other (less fortunate) steemians..
What is the trending posts contributing
In my honest opinion, nothing... I really don't bother looking anymore because of the majority of bought posts with no value.... I won't mention names, but there is a musician who has a lot of trending posts. He joined Steemit not so long ago only talking about the things in life that matters...Some (to me) floaty posts as "Believe in your strength", "Discover your weaknesses and use them" , "How I got succesfull" and so on. Not the kind of posts I expect from a musician, but at the other hand mostly they are creative arti people.. No reading some of his posts he got rid of all the other topics and presents himself now as a absolute expert on Crypto with dito long posts about crypto... To me it means that's something stinks......
What can we do about it
Well, I don't think we can and to be honest I don't know if we should. I still think it's a pitty to see this happening but it is (after all) possible and permitted, is it moral ok? No (although, not my morals), for that the least we can do is leave the trending for what it is... And that's just what is happening I think. Perhaps we can introduce a new hashtag #alternativetrending :) at the end it will consist of the most trending posts in the tag...
But then, how do we get exposure for our posts?
Well that's an easy one (sort of speak), just put out your great content like you always do. things won't go fast, but you shouldn't expect it will.. You can of course join multiple curation groups like
or 
where you gather with other steemians sharing your posts and helping out others... And be conitinuious, with that I mean, post on a regular base but also read and comment the posts of others. I think the last is even more important because that's all part of (my opinion) of being member of a community... Care and share, be involved, but most of all Enjoy what you are doing.
Thank you for reading
and 
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