@taskmaster4450 - the truth is that a lot of steemians do realise that commenting on trending posts do fetch them author rewards and post the most mundane stereotype comments (copy and paste literally). Therefore, in a trending post, half the comments will be worthless spam out to earn a quick buck.
Lot of times, I do feel that quality newbies with good post get sidelined and ignored because they don't know how to get better exposure and because of that steemit has a huge divide - the whales who get spammed with a gazillion comments for every post of theirs that earn 100s in rewards, and the poor newbies, many of who jsut feel underappreciated, get nothing for their hard effort, feel disillusioned and leave.
I have personally posted more than 2-3 dozen quality articles I wrote (each of 1000 words or more) and I'm somebody who's had a pretty decent run as a published author - and yet all my earnings on steemit in 3 months is worth less than what a single trending post often earns :) .. that's the irony of it.
Anyway, these days, I do take time out to post more comments than post articles in the hope I get more followers so that when I post articles, I get decent readership. It took me a couple of months to realise this though.. better late than never... :)
THanks for the insightful post btw.. enjoyed reading it..
Watching how this site is, I think that what you said is a core problem that the devs are going to need to fix. It reminds me of the reply girls on YouTube, and then the fake giveaways. What I always wonder is what will happen next after they fix it, and what new issues will arise.