You forgot to mention possibly the most corrosive aspect of guild curators using whale accounts to self-vote many of their mediocre posts: when people consider joining steemit and take a look at what trends at the top everyday.....they look at that and say to themselves, "Nah, that kinda sucks. I'm not going to waste my time there."
We're all in a bubble, but this is happening. It has to be dealt with. SOON.
This is serious as fuck, people. The reputation of a blogging platform has to be taken seriously, especially when we need to provide serious competition to Medium and other platforms that contain real virality at the top of their trending pages.