I'm not bothered about being on the trending page as it probably won't get me what I want, which is engagement. Of course I might make more money if I bought votes, but it seems the profit margin can be small. I get plenty of engagement on my posts because I built up connections with people.
I like your Mcdonalds analogy.
Yeah, it's been shown that the trending page won't get you quality comments and engagement. You'll get fake people's fake compliments because they want their profile to be seen in the comment section of a trending post.
It's all just empty "good post" spam. I'm sure there's good stuff in-between, but most of the people I like don't even bother with the trending page, so there's that.
I find I tend to only get spammy comments when I use some of the top tags. I'd rather stay under their radar and get better quality comments. I wish the trending page had less prominence for new users. The Hot page is a little better.
Yeah, lately I've been using just random tags - save for #fiction and #gaming. And my spam comment counter has actually been pretty low lately.
I find that using steemit or steem attracts the spam. Tags are so abused that they are effectively useless for many topics.
Yup, it's pretty pointless most of the time to try to find content that actually has anything to do with STEEM under the #steem tag. Same for #steemit.
A properly functioning tag system would fix a lot around here.