In theory – and note the phrasing – it could be that only a relatively small portion of the Steemit posting community writes articles that the majority of the Steemit reading community find valuable enough to upvote, weighted heavily by those with the greatest stake.

So, even with the most generous reading of what Trending actually says, it translates to "really rich folks who have been around for a while like these articles so you should too."

Maybe it's true that the repeatedly top exposed writers are, in fact, the best writers on the platform. Possibly that's true. Maybe.

In practice, that's very close to ludicrous.

Looking at the word cloud provided immediately reveals some of the incestuous nature of the content as presented. Unfortunately, the Categories displayed really doesn't capture exactly how much of the content is monocultural. (I'd really like to see a breakdown which takes into account all the tags on a given post that makes it to Trending, because merely the first one doesn't necessarily reveal anything like the number of high traffic tags it may be pulling on.)

What we do see from the straight Category presentation is that unless you are writing about cryptocurrency or about STEEM and Steemit itself, you can probably look forward to never, ever being on Trending at all. (Unless you get lucky and happen to be interested in homesteading, for some reason. Or hit the lotto with your post and get a bunch of upvotes from follow train or distribution bot, which is something you can never come to count on consistently.)

Ultimately, I think @PaulaG has it absolutely in the right when she talks about the necessity for Trending to take into account the expressed interests of an individual who has come to the platform. That is the missing secret sauce. Alternately, Trending can be the same as it is now, and something more useful based on an individual's expressed preferences can come to be equally promoted.

My breath is currently not being held.