I hear you @read3986. Self upvoting, and voting for friends is actually pretty common place. In fact ever since whales started selling their votes to other users in exchange for Steem. It altered the whole spirit and dynamic of the platform to the extent to where people need to promote their posts via whale services in order for it to be seen. Otherwise there is not much of a chance to get noticed.
I know it doesn't seem right, but unfortunately that's the direction that people have chosen to go with it. There's no way to force whales to engage in manual curation, although many still probably do from time to time.