You are right. I have noticed that people upvote only posts with good reputation and also SP. Like you stated, posts being found on the trending page isn't worth it. Hard work don't pay any longer on steemit, one can easily post crap and get rewarded as long he/she knows the right people to upvote them or pay for excessive bidding bots.
@Ned should kindly look into this and may be help to sustain the steemit sphere.
We can always do our bit by upvoting quality post and take time to check our auto upvote trail is being used for unworthy posts and remove it. STEEM has a future but Ned needs to implore strategies to check these abuse