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He has a massive amount of steem power, so he holds more WEIGHT when he votes on things, hes basically the godzilla of steemit, except instead of destruction he rains down gifts of strong upvotes

Thanks for the valuable information.

It's a matter of either investing in the system (fiat currency and/or converting other crypto in the market game to STEEM), creating great content that is popularly upvoted, or both.
Personally I am a bit disturbed someone so smart and with much power here uses his voting power to profit himself so much. Yet I can't complain, his content is excellent and he is free to promote you or me or himself as he sees fit. But this "upvoting self" is really hurting the community as a whole. For all the Whales upvoting their own content and comments (and there are a LOT of them) it is only depleting the rewards pool for those of us off to a new start here. I would like to see that $40 upvote go to someone like you (should you be posting original content that's good).
You can find many articles detailing the harm to our community as a whole due to people self-upvoting (Whales in particular, since they wield the most power here) with a simple search.
@l0k1 is currently creating a bot project @smackdown.kitty that is designed for "Busting the Bubble of Self-voting". And I choose to support it 100%.
Don't get me wrong, I do not wish to attack @craig-grant. Just wishing to answer your question and explain how potentially harmful such actions can be to the rest of the community. I will definately keep following craig-grant and upvoting for him whenever I have voting power to spare (BUT Red Fish and Minnows will come first).

upvoting myself enables me to attract more attention and get more followers that I also reward everyday, and encourages my followers to buy steem power so they can do the same thing I'm doing, I buy steem power everyday, since 2016

My apologies, again was not a personal attack against you. I believe you have even upvoted some of my content in the past.
Yet I hope you can at least see that you did set it up for me to express the example, and that self voting can be harmful to the community and new users (and IS when malicious Whales only upvote there own posts).
My Official Statement: @craig-grant is not a malicious Whale, and is definitely a positive influence on our community by both educating by example and supporting a few of us smaller fish on a daily basis.

buying steem power everyday trumps all those praises, crypto is about money first, not society

Upvoting yourself has been part of Steem since day 1.

That's sort of the point.

And exactly how does that make it "good for the community"? How does that change the FACT it's abuse (and it is being abused) diminishes the voting pool for newcomers as well as hurts the community as a whole (the rewards pool is not endless, and these Whales are sucking up everything leaving nothing but scraps for newcomers)?
IDK. Maybe the abusive Whales want to scare away the little fish. More profit for their selfish gains, right.
I encourage you to look into it a little bit by reading the @aggroed article Autovorotic Asphyxiation the Mega Circle Jerk is Choking Out Itself Through the Rewards Pool, followed by @gentlebot's Pro-tip: if you up-vote your own comment, I won't vote for you and @l0k1's Introducing Smackdown Kitty & Closed Beta of Smackdown Kitty begins.
And if you still believe, after reading these articles and researching it yourself, that consistent/constant self-voting by the Whales is not hurting little Red Fish and Minnows like me (even chasing them away, forcing them to give up) then there is nothing more to be done to help the community as a whole - top to bottom, Red Fish to Whales.

Wait, is that really a thing? A whale's voting weight can be applied to their own post?

Your witnessing it as it happens.... and every time a Whale consistantly upvotes it's own comment or post, not only does it decrease the prize pool for the rest of us yet also decreases the value of it's voting power each and every time they do it. Is why I am choosing to support the @smackdown.kitty project. We can't stop it, but that don't mean we have to agree or like it. If someone wants to put profit before people (becoming part of the social problem rather than a solution to) that is their business. I can only hope the community recognizes it and reacts accordingly (cut our support to those types). Again, @craig-grant is not a big part of the problem. I have personally witnessed him supporting us small fish (including myself). I speak of malicious Whales in general.

As you can see here
Screenshot at 2017-07-02 15-35-39.png
I prefer to use my upvotes to help out others with the hope (disillusion) it will be returned in kind. Depending on the community's support rather than stuffing my account and using the power purchased to profit mostly myself (I have stopped upvoting my own things unless no one else votes for it or at least until a few people give it some upvotes).

Why not? If the average user can vote for himself, why can not the whale make it?

I repeat, for the umpteenth time, this is not an attack on @graig-grant. And I clearly stated it is entirely the choice of the individual (just as it is my choice to disagree with it).
And yet everyone is choosing to "attack" me (see HERE) while completely ignoring doing any research on how it DOES deplete the rewards pool (which DOES hurt any and all newcomers, like it isn't hard enough to get any exposure with the shadow of the Whales and flood of content going on).
I thought I was being mature about this, thought maybe some of you with your big brains and even bigger egos would take the time to investigate something other than yourselves and your precioussss profits. I guess I was wrong, and wish I would have just kept my mouth shut.

Besides.... anyone who would actually invest any hard earned fiat currency or crypto into this system just so guys like him can suck the rewards pool dry are really just fooling themselves and wasting their time. They would be better off just transferring their funds directly into his account, why fool themselves by putting it into this system when the majority is just going to end up in his (and brown-noser accounts just like his) account anyway.
I was going to throw a few Benjamins into it.... but after this experience and the discoveries I interpreted... no f'ing way will I ever do that now!