Great points. I've been doing this, and I'm not even a minnow anymore.

"What this should show minnows is the importance of either picking your fights with caution or keep your head low and avoid the flak altogether. "

I strongly recommend that minnows simply avoid any post they would feel the need to flag or make negative comments on. It's too easy for them to be abused, and too satisfying for the abuser.

You need the threat of a powerful downvote to force others to consider retaliation in their game-theoretical analysis of whether they should downvote you. You don't have this as a minnow, so even if the shining light of truth and reason is on your side, all it takes is someone emotional with some SP and two clicks.

Avoid topics and authors that trigger you, unless you are able to debate them in a reasoned and intellectual manner that makes you look better and them look worse. Note: this is very difficult to do consistently and most of us are unable to restrain emotion well enough to come out looking the clear victor in most cases. This is a high risk strategy, but sometimes, you will see your follower number shoot up as you appear to be the reasonable one in a debate with some ranting lunatic. (I have used this strategy on SJW/feminist posts, as well as the articles kyriacos posts that are full of factual falsehoods such as "The Star Trek Federation most closely resembles North Korea, politically".)