I'm not a big fan of being able to buy your way in with huge amounts of SBD, but I am also not a fan of just seeing the same whales appearing on the trending page just because they are whales. Maybe there should be a trending page where you can move a slider(like the one we vote with). This slider would allow you to see whats trending based on a persons SP value. Put the slider to the max(say over 100k SP) and you can see which whales are trending. Put the slider down between 100-500SP and you can see what minnows are trending. Just an idea though, would be tough to put into practice
It would be tough but I agree that it would be good for the trending pages to be overhauled in some way. At least the way you suggest means that it would be tailored to each user. It never hurts to think outside the box!