Not sure if you've been following the whale wars, but ya, it's bad. Something to note though, grumpycat isn't trying to do it for any noble purposes. In the Steem Dev slack, people talk about how he's just trying to steal more money from the rewards pool, just like haejin, but trying to frame that in some "noble" cause. And it's important to note, he's basically a bot too, just like the one's everyone is using. His "checkthisout" account is actually him making fake posts, and then upvoting his own comments for massive rewards. He's trying to hide the fact that he is taking advantage of the system.

Important point though, this is not about decentralization. This is about incentive structures and game theory. Since the shift to linear rewards systems, the same change that enabled voting bots, it enabled whales to both control what makes it onto the trending page via upvotes, as well as for other whales to flag accounts that they disagree with.

Sorry to hear that he basically "stole" all the SBD you put into those voting bots. Super frustrating.