Another nice aspect of this is that Whales, Orcas, Dolphins, Minnows, and Red Fish are all going to be mixed in together. A newer person who joins a group and start to interact, posting quality comments and articles, will catch the attention of the community.
It seemed like when I joined eight months communities on Discord were the place; and that still stands now, but I wish we had a way of meshing the communities we belong to on Discord into the steemit platform. I usually don't go to the trending page myself, I prefer my own feed and even sometimes peek into the NEW tab looking for unknown members for my curation posts.
I don't and never have used bid bots; all my votes are manual and have been from day.