I would say both yes and no. It could be reward pool rape, but this is basically "the old way" so to speak. Even though some people still follow that.
Ever since the SBD spike before Christmas, many well established Steemians started to produce more and more articles per day. I know a handful of established Steemians who started to produce anything between 5 and 10 per day, all due to the SBD spike.
The sad part is, that I wouldn't mind them doing that, in case they did that prior to the spike too. But prior to the spike, they published 1 or 2. Perhaps 3 things per 24 hour, and as soon as SBD spiked, they got very active...
And that's an act of greed.