First off... I loved the random pictures, they made my night. Secondly, I just wrote an article pertaining to self-voting, and to sum it up in a few short words... the shits gotta go!
All they need to do is remove the self-voting aspect of this platform, and I could really see it going places.
Whales, and dolphins, and small fish (oh my) alike will actively seek out good content and up-vote it once again. As for now though, they will up-vote themselves dry, sign off, and do it all again tomorrow... and why wouldn't they?
The system as it is now will surely fail, and I can already see the effects firsthand within the "Hot" and "Trading" tabs, because ever since this new self-voting code (why anyone thought this was a good idea we will never fucking know) was implemented, the top posters have been making significantly less.