You touched some important points, and that's been more or less what I was referring to when saying that I don't dare to stand up for my beliefs. There is a strong disequilibrium, and everybody is aware of it, including Ned Scott (comment thread of his today's announcement):

N^2 failed at highlighting content quality content too. It’s biased to the same group at the top, who aren’t or don’t want to be editors/curators of the trending page. If you’re looking for ways of achieving better results in token-oriented sorting of content, then consider SMT Oracles

SMTs are supposed to become the solution to these deficits.
I'm not less emotional about the situation than you are, but I definitely will give SMTs a shot. Try to not look at the trending page too often in the meantime :-)