I understand and agree with the first part. It was my first instinct to write that question too. Hence why I upvoted your most recent post at the same time as I had no intention or desire to affect rewards.
There aren't really any "proper" way to downvote. But imo one way that should be more normalized is to simply be active in expressing one's opinion on the order in which both content and comments should be sorted. That is the idea of proof of brain that I've got and that was most often communicated by STINC and Ned when I got here (although that idea seems rather lost these days).
Anyways, I know you don't want a discussion, but I would be curious to hear if you do believe Downvotes can or will ever be less stigmatized with HF21, and used in the way I described without it just causing frustration?