I've been through a severe lull here before. What helped keep people around back then was the fact everyone who stuck around was actually voting. Now, with so many being paid to look away, they're not here, they're not voting and if they do vote, they're being paid to do so, meaning the content producers with rewards beside their posts are only receiving about 10%, making this platform even less appealing, while those just starting out have very few people to turn to in the form of support for their work, and those of us who are sticking around are already maxed out and can't afford to vote for many more members, so if I wanted to help someone, I'd have to cut someone else off from my votes, which would be discouraging to the one who was receiving support, so yeah, major trickle down effect. What makes this one worse though are these folks selling votes. Soon there will only be a couple hundred buying votes, the rest will most likely be forced out. Then those selling votes no longer make money because those buying realize nobody is around to read, and this whole experiment is over. I'm sure that's what the vote sellers want though, otherwise they wouldn't be doing it.