HardFork 19 has been both a cause for celebration, and a source of dismay for many steemians.
"But, now everyone's votes are actually worth something!" You might say, but I think that's part of the problem.
Don't get me wrong. I'm very excited to see that my votes are worth up to 7 cents post HardFork. At 100% VP, I could only give a penny. However, I've seen a ridiculous amount of abuse of our beautiful rewards system, and I'm growing tired of the shenanigans. People either don't know, or just don't care, that what I talk about in this post is pissing more than a few people off, and we, as a community, need to do something about it.
I'm sure everyone has seen their "potential payouts" steadily decrease over the course of seven days, even if the price of SBD or steem stay somewhat stable. 
I'll only call one user out by name, and that's 
Reward abuse is a disease that steemit needs to cure itself of.
It certainly didn't START with HF19, but it has certainly gotten worse, and I propose HF20 REMOVES the ability to upvote one's own content, essentially paying yourself for using the network. That's not how this is supposed to work... OTHER PEOPLE should be rewarding you IF they deem your content worthy. Anyone who would have a problem with not being able to upvote their own posts or comments are likely the ones abusing the ability. I wonder how many people would rage quit if they learned they actually had to earn what they make? Good riddance, I say.
I've recently talked with people that believe since they "bought into" the platform by investing thousands of dollars, that they are simply getting their investment back. That, too, is a flawed mentality. It's completely disregarding what Steemit is supposed to be. If you want to invest in STEEM, have at it. When the value goes up because the rest of us are actually using the network "correctly", you'll get to read the rewards too, but paying yourself for nothing is pathetic, and will likely cause you more harm than good.
If you don't know how to use steemit, and want to learn, I think you should first learn some of the things NOT to do...
I've started a discord channel where people can come together and link posts or comments that they deem to be abuse. I would LOVE to hear if people are interested in protecting the reward pool from these asshole spammers and what amounts to theft.
Thanks for listening to my rant... I'll be starting a post series about making ethical choices on a social media site that pays one for their efforts. Expect the first part to hit a little later today.
