And, for me, there are even more scenarios of negativity.
From the outside, it starts to look like you can push a certain kind of post at a certain kind of quality and garner a certain level of reward. In reality, you find that most of the perceived reward is already spent in buying the votes that make it up.
For people coming it, it suddenly becomes disheartening when you realise that, actually, no, what you see on the Trending page is not a reflection of the system. You're not going to be making $800 for going on holiday and whacking out a few pictures, you're not going to be hitting trending by making a Steem evangelical post... not without dumping in a whole load of investment at first.
Why should these investors looking for ROI care?
Fundamentally, they are invested in the ecosystem. If the ecosystem grows, then their ROI grows. However, if the big front page advertising to the outside world is a false promise full of trash, then it is more likely to harm the ecosystem in terms of users, adoption, bad word of mouth. Suddenly, that ROI can be under threat. Everyone here who is very much "well, let's just be hands off and let everything manage itself" could find the ecosystem they are invested in under threat.
All I can say is that I have been here for 2 years and not once have I made a any decision about my actions here based on the trending page.
There is so much opportunity here for the people that want to take it. Some will and some won't.
Personally, I don't go anywhere near it. There is nothing there for me. But it very much is the front page of the website for non-users.
It is the "this is the content you will read, these are the rewards you can get" advertisement to prospective users.