What I mean is that the trending lists seem to take into account which note is getting the most interaction directly (replies, quotes, reposts, zaps, likes, etc.) -- which is mostly a reflection of how many followers that npub has --, but not how much interaction the interactions are getting. There's no measure of the second-order interaction, typical of human conversation in groups, so you can't really tell how much influence one note is having upon the wider discussion.

So, a GM note from a huge account is "trending", a lively back-n-forth discussion between small and mid-sized accounts isn't, but the second is where the "human action" is.