My first inkling of just how abusive downvotes could be was when I got in the middle of two whales, and a poem that I was extremely proud of got a heavy downvote. I myself had done nothing to either of those two, and the poem was about hawks. Now I sometimes don't post what I want to post, for fear of reprisal. I'm self-censoring, which of course is the purpose of downvoting content - it squelches posts with that type of content. Insidious censorship.