Thank you very, very much for this reply.
So, first, please don't watch THHGTTG ;P ... The movie is sub-par. You absolutely have to read the books though. Douglas Adams was a genius. I promise you, they'll be the funniest books you've ever read =)
About the vote buying... My aim is exactly as you say... To grow my account. I have 64 Steem Power now, and about 25SBD ... I started from scratch so I feel good about my progress (been on here for 3 months now). My goal is to reach a point where I have enough followers that I don't need to buy votes anymore to increase my Steem Power. I feel better about it because they do keep a check on abusers.
Also, your occasional upvotes on my posts haven't gone unnoticed. Thank you <3
@mandelsage have a look at @tarazkp latest post -
https://steemit.com/steemit/@tarazkp/10-little-idiots-trying-to-answer-or-if-everyone-delegates-to-bidbots
See also comments.
Thank you Jolanta =) I've read it and left a comment there. Just to be clear: I have never used a bidbot before. I buy votes from their service, from real people who sell their votes through their service. I've decided to stop doing even this though... Until I am 100% of whether it's damaging to the system or not.
At least I no longer run into bandwidth problems! (Although that might only be because steemit traffic is way down right now).