Technology and Living in the 21st Century

Something that I have noticed lately are the tricks that people use to rank high in the top Twitter trending topics or get their message into the top trending topics.
I heard of one person setting up at least 100 twitter accounts to post their hashtag. This allowed them to avoid the spamming rules as well as get their information out as one of the top trending topics. Is this fair? That remains to be seen but until Twitter changes the rules, it seems like it is a fair way to get your trends noticed. This is no different than sending in one thousands entries to a contest. It just increases your odds of winning.
The other trend that I've noticed and isn't as nice is people spamming their content in tweets but using the top trending topic words to lure people into reading their content. The Tweet's content usually has nothing to do with that trending topic and in some cases can be very offensive. Twitter truely is becoming a place where you have to be careful on what you click unless it comes from a trusted tweeter.
If in doubt, use one of the many services that expands shortened URLs. http://longurl.org/
If after you expand the URL and it is still pointing to a short URL, I would advise not to click on the link unless you have pop-up blockers enabled and good, current anti-virus software installed and running on your system. Twitter isn't as safe as it used to be.
Oh, and one more thing. Please check out that website that is referenced in a Tweet before you RT it, unless you want to look like a fool for RT'ing a tweet that leads people to garbage or offensive websites.