I've been there as well, there was a time before when posts were making ~100 rewards on the trending page and I was laughing when I opened them to see, 5 views :D aaaand 150 upvotes to back that up :D those were the days when the bots were strong

here is a quick list of the timeline I've witnessed :D

https://busy.org/challenge30days/@j3dy/re-maxg-2-30-steemit-hall-of-fame-20180104t151025871z

and I will go into more detail from my perspective in my upcoming post