I think your ego-out the window approach is very sound. But I must say, in the extremely short period I've spent on Steemit, lots of content that hit trending was honestly sub-par and NOT deserving of the value it made, from a business and marketing point of view.

Since trending seems to be the be all end all to a post being visible and 'sticky', a few authors dominating it through pure SLOTH on the bot owner's side seems like an absolute failure of the system's integrity.