I never thought I would ever use the downvote button since I never fully understood it or grasped its purpose. For me to use it on a post, there has to be a logical or valid reason, and I should be able to consider its long-term impact or the bigger picture. That’s why I never actually used it—until today.
The first post I downvoted was… my own 😁.
Weird, right? I guess it is. But if that’s not strange enough, I even asked a Hive whale for a favor—to downvote the same post I did. Of course, I have my reasons, which I’ll explain in today’s post 😊.
Downvotes are a real thing on Hive, and they’re never pleasant to receive. Personally, I find them hurtful for a simple reason—part of my post’s rewards get deducted from my potential payout. And who would like that? I believe no one wants to be downvoted, as it can feel like a personal attack. If you’ve worked hard on your post, you’d naturally want it to earn a fair amount and feel rewarded for the effort and time you put into it, right?
That’s my personal perspective. However, whales often see the bigger picture, which influences their decision to downvote a post or even a series of posts from a content creator. I won’t go too deep into the reasons why they adjust the rewards of certain posts, but I’d like to believe they carefully consider their actions before pressing that button.
Not too long ago—about a month ago—I started receiving a series of downvotes from a whale's account. Every single post I made for a week was downvoted by around $8 ±, and I was baffled as to why I was being targeted. The account responsible for the downvotes never posts or even comments. I didn’t reach out to them because I assumed they wouldn’t bother replying, given that they seemed like a silent account.
I didn’t make a fuss about it. Instead, I simply observed what the account would do next. I soon realized that the whale was consistently downvoting my posts whenever they neared the $30 mark. Seeing this pattern made me think it was going to be a permanent thing.
That realization made me feel pretty down because it gave me anxiety whenever my post rewards got close to the threshold that this account seemed to be enforcing.
Now, back to why I downvoted my own post yesterday—one of the major curation groups, Appreciator, upvoted my post, pushing its potential rewards close to $30.
So, I decided to take action. I gave my post a full downvote, reducing its payout by $1. But after realizing that wasn’t enough, I tagged another whale in the comments, asking them to downvote my post and bring the rewards down by another $3.
I did get a response, but it was mostly questions—which made me realize that my request was actually a pretty odd thing to ask someone to do 😂.
Honestly, I expected them to just say, "Okay," and downvote my post. But so far… nothing.
It looks like my request weirded them out, and I might not get a response after all 😁.
In the end, I never thought I’d be in a position where I’d downvote my own post, let alone ask someone else to do it. But given the circumstances, it felt like the best way to avoid unnecessary attention from the silent whale. Whether or not my request gets fulfilled, this whole experience has made me see downvotes in a completely different light.
Here's a totally unrelated photo that I wanted to use as my cover photo. I'm currently exploring Orchard road and so I wanted to share this photo for today's post. I will also make a proper post about this photo walk and share more photos and videos too 🥂.
