I commented but never upvoted this post, but I didn't downvote it either and here's why :
I have a feeling a lot of people upvoted simply because the post was made by @dantheman and has absolutely nothing to do with its content. Upvoting a post with high curation rewards because you'll get paid is an unfortunate side effect of the current reward system in place. Not to mention high value posts get thrown almost immediately to the top of the trending page and draw that much more of a crowd who also, upvote it as well.
Because the trending page is sorted in descending order of the total vote count, most people want a piece of the curation rewards which in turn makes a high value post that much more of a target for curation bounty hunters. Those voters then up the vote count and compound the problem even further by pushing the post that much higher up the trending page. This type of mob mentality when voting draws even more attention to a post regardless of content because people see all the votes, the SBD value, and they want in on the action like everyone else who voted before them.
This problem is compounded even further when you take into account the fear some people have of downvoting users with massive amounts of SP. An upvote means you'll not only get paid for curation but you'll also skirt the risk of upsetting a high SP member of Steemit. The downside however, is both money and fear are powerful motivators. I'm assuming that these motivations tend to be a major factor in determining how and when people vote, regardless of the content in question.
The system is very much a double edged sword that causes people (whether they're conscious of it or not) to run a risk/reward assessment before acting on a post, regardless of its content. Especially when the stakes are very high, and this post right here is a perfect example.
To answer your whole question, yes I did read the whole post and opted not to vote on it. I simply left a comment and moved on. I wanted to see what @dantheman had to say, but have little to no interest in being part of the curation reward hunters. That type of voting is simply bad for the future of the platform....
PS : The inability to remove one's own upvotes from one's own posts is currently being worked on and hopefully will be pushed with the next Hardfork. I simply have not had the time to get to it yet and the deadline is fast approaching... I only mentioned this because I keep accidentally upvoting my own posts and can't undo it because of a known bug that's being patched very soon.
I have been making this point for a few days now. Users are trying to preemptively vote on content that they think will trend, based on previous trending topics and authors, regardless of the content and quality. And who drives this kind of voting on these posts? The whales.
They're incentivizing herd mentality and reward seeking - not finding and rewarding actual valuable content and contributors. (And I fully understand subjective value, but we're talking about reward-based behavior without any associated risk. Value is pretty much a non-factor here - only finding the trendy categories and authors that the whales are likely to upvote is what seems to influence voting right now.)
And there doesn't appear to be a large volume of people wanting to change this...because they're still hoping for their own big pay days to begin - or to continue.
Totally agree!