Thank you. I have been here one year and just noticed a lot of minnows self-voting their comments in the last month or two. I get it about the rewards, but you are alienating bigger fish who might upvote your good comments. There are many big-fish posts showing very low regard for this practice.
In my case, my vote is not big, but I do upvote good comments I get. I do not upvote people's comments if they have already upvoted their own. I know I am not alone.
If you upvote other people's comments instead of you own, you will probably have better results in the long term.
Or post more frequently and self-upvote there. Post self-voting by minnows in not an issue here.
You might consider yourself to be plankton, but 7 cents is a large vote here, sadly.
Thank you because I heard that too. Perhaps joining more groups can take away the hopelessness of self voting. It is demoralizing when you are really thoughtful and waiting on a whale to notice. ;(
Joy
I went the direction of not worrying about the whales and I do not even know who most of them are after 1 year here. The people I try to connect with are active steemers, bigger than me, but not whale status.