Hey everyone, every now and again people ask me about flagging. I have a rough history with flagging. I'm going to share that story briefly and then after that I'm going to give some guidelines about flagging.
Once upon a time
There was a newb Discord leader named 
The young Aggroed donned his coat of arms and brazenly said, "remove thy flag or prepare for death." The young dickwad (the bad guy in the story, not aggroed) didn't remove his flag or lay down his arms. Instead he started randomly flagging everyone. I mean everyone. He went off the rails and burned all his VP flagging. Young Aggroed used the VP on
After spending hundreds of dollars flagging this one bastard a handful of whales thought it was improper that the little dickwad should be flagged to nothing. They upvoted the dickwad back up to $50 and helped recover his reputation. The two whales had more Steem Power than
What's the moral?
It's actually pretty ambiguous to me. I guess the first is don't get into flag wars. Don't get into flag wars you can lose. This platform has unintended consequences. I went to silence this dick, and instead got him allies and more money than if I hadn't intervened. It's a strange place.
General Rules
Look, the game of Steem is a little like King of the Hill. If you're the biggest account you can probably stand on top of the hill longest. It's possible a team of people may come along to push you off, but generally you're fairly safe if you have an assload of SP and want to act however you want. We have a few examples of that on the platform.
If you're not one of the early miners, independantly wealthy Steem investors, and don't have a mega following then the following advice is meant for you.
Stay out of it!
If you have a small account you're probably going to get slammed, lose rep, lose rewards going back a week, and basically just get roflpwned. Maybe the cause is just and it's worth it... maybe, but you should know the risks going into it. The big risk of flagging a smaller account (especially for an unjust cause like opinion flagging) may end up sticking one's dick in a hornet's nest. Flagging a larger account may land you in rewards jail where every penny you were potentially about to earn for the last week vanishes and now you have a whale on your back sitting on any chance you get a reward.
Judo
Resorting to flagging is sorta like resorting to solving problems with your fists rather than your words. It might work, and you might get your ass beat. I would suggest finding ways to deescalate the situtation. Rather than flagging and revenge flagging try to find a common ground and common people to talk out your differences.
What do you do if you get flagged by a whale?!? You should fucking laugh your head off and be grateful for the opportunity. At the moment when you receive the flag it's likely that you're raging mad, fuming that some other asshole could dare to flag your post, but what you're missing is the attention that flags bring to your content.
You were probably sitting there with 600 followers and almost no one reading your shit. Then a mega whale on the platform flags some stuff. That can be a turning point for you! Use that to make an argument of why you aren't a worthless shit, why you get to say or write cool stuff, and why people should support you despite the flag by big mean (insert whale name here). This doesn't mean you're getting out of shit any time soon, but it may be that you get more exposure, followers, and votes from receving the flag than you did the entire time before it.
What about baby flags?
I tend to think it's best to talk it out or ignore it. I've been getting flagged by 
You'll notice that even while bringing up this flag and the guy that is doing it I'm actually supporting the flagger with my audience. It's not my intention, but simply by telling this portion of the story there's going to be some guy that head's over to his account and followers him because of this. I'm helping the guy financially trying to hurt me or trying to get me to shut up with my opinions on the state of the world.
I'd rather talk it out privately. So,
Summary
What'd we learn?
Steem has unintended consequences. It's best not to get involved.
If you get involved try not to pick fights you're bound to lose because you have less SP.
If you do get involved make sure you have the moral high ground or you'll get your rewards beat up.
If you're getting flagged by a whale don't go balistic and write a rage quit letter, but instead be humble and thankful for the flag and try to judo the whales power and prestige to elevate your account.
If you're going to flag a smaller account be prepared for some explosive personality shit. Many egos can't take a flag. You might also get retaliation flags, and some other nastiness.
For all these reasons try not to flag and just try to run a good clean page of content you like.
Lastly, and a side note
If you get flagged, don't run to the FBI. That's a dumb thing that only a Badman would do. Don't act like that. It's childish and especially if your intention is to grow on this platform it's entirely counter productive. Like everyone else try to work things out by using words and hearing concerns. Then maybe you can get traction. Otherwise you're likely just sticking your dick in the hornet's nest and everyone knows that no fun. I'll leave it like this for now.