Hive account@shenanigator, I appreciate this post. In order to be fully transparent, I have used purchased 2 upvotes from Hive account@worldclassplayer over the last week. I have also requested upvotes from PAL as well.

I am going to rethink my position on this. As a minnow, I am trying to engage, but progress is slow. It seems that when you get some traction behind a post, people are more likely to take a second look. That was my reasoning for buying an upvote.

I would not want everything on Steemit to move in that direction, but at the same time I want to utilize community accepted practices to grow my influence on Steemit. Thanks for the thoughts! I am still processing.