I'd love to see the downvoting work as intended and am glad you brought it up in this way.

I've been noticing more and more smoothie recipes being posted and taking off and assume it is because people are hoping to cash in on the trend. It builds momentum by itself. I even had to refrain from upvoting one because I figured it was worth the curation rewards if it took off. It did and I immediately felt bitter in a way I didn't expect to.

While there's nothing to be done except to laugh it off, I find myself thinking that the opening page being the trending one might be causing a lot of unnecessary discontent and driving away potential investors and members.

On one hand, a lot of us are consciously choosing to upvote only original, quality content. A smoothie recipe makes a good example of content that can only rarely be called original, the same way no one today can claim to have invented bread. I'm not against recipes being on Steemit or upvoted, but it is a lot harder to convince my artist friends that this is the place to blog and that this community values original content when I risk looking like I am an idiot or simply being dishonest with them.

A working downvote would change what trends.