Yeah, that's the dark side of having a community for everything and a system can be abused the earlier you come to it (I still think it's fair, but I wish we could make it better.)

As for me, I don't check trending page... It's for the posts of the wealthy. Most of the good posts get around $0.00 to $12, if it got more than that it's probably curated by a group.

So what do I do?

• I choose a specific tag (like #gaming but that's generic, #retrogaming is a good example).
• Instead of Hot or Trending I check "new". Since the tag is specific, most of the posts in it would be made by people who actually care about the topic.
• I choose to read only a post I like its title, thumbnail picture OR BOTH.
• I choose who I follow carefully (mostly) I don't usually follow people who don't put effort in their writing.
• I check my feed more, because I know people I follow write things I'm interested in.

Not the best things to do, but I currently manage with the system... Steemit is still in Beta and people suggest improvements all the time. I think we would have something like subreddits in the future.