True. Whales can do it. If they vote for themselves in a way similar to how they vote for others I personally wouldn't have an issue. However, if I was to take the lazy panda as an example. Usual upvotes are 30-50% for those people who write a good article on the post prompt. If the lazy panda decided to weigh in on the post topic because it was of particular interest to them I wouldn't have any issue with them giving themselves the same upvote. Its just on equal footing with everyone else who wrote an article.
Now if they decide everyone else gets 20% and I get 100% that would be equal to upvoting themselves 5x what they are doing for others. It skews the trending as you mentioned.
Anyways I'll tag you again on October 2nd as you asked. If things got misrepresented, well, that's why I'm trying to learn here before the community is "Open for business" and why I tag you in posts like these so I can get your input while there are few other eyes on the community (at least I hope there aren't too many eyes here right now...Kinda messy).