Experiment away. Just use caution and don't post links back to your posts on other people's posts. Like trying to steal from their glory sorta of thing. "Hey, check out my post..."

No amount of quick posting on your account would ever get your reputation score dinged. It's when people try to exploit other trending posts in bad ways that they get in trouble. I doubt you planned to do something like that, but I just wanted to make sure you were aware of the potential issue. :)

Lots of people post meme images to trending and popular posts though. You can easily do that to get a lot more attention far more quickly. Let me dig up an example... This one is perfect to explain the concept:

https://steemit.com/steemit/@aggroed/can-we-pause-for-half-a-second-and-say-congrats-and-thanks-to-steemit-we-re-breaking-multiple-records-right-now#@finnian/re-stellabelle-re-aggroed-can-we-pause-for-half-a-second-and-say-congrats-and-thanks-to-steemit-we-re-breaking-multiple-records-right-now-20180104t175617214z

They posted memes in appropriate ways as replies to a trending and popular post. Then those awesome replies get upvotes, and then of course that greatly expands their exposure and follower base.

I regularly go through trending posts looking for ones that I can genuinely add more value to the conversation. I've had very high payouts from doing that, and it has gotten me a lot of followers. I stick to what I know though, or it will be something about liberty. :)

Using that strategy will help you tremendously here.