It's only a mildly different subgame. I don't blame you for liking the "sucking up to whales" game and disliking the "do a shitload of math to profit from bot votes" game. But the latter one is actually way more meritocratic and allowing the smart to swim than the former. All you have to do is the math.

Votes by humans who manually went through something I created and felt like it was worth their time to upvote - no matter their SP - are infinitely valuable.

Upvoted for understanding this.